In his book, In the Grip of Grace: When You Can’t Hang on, Bryan Chapell tells this story: “On Sunday, August 16,1987, Northwest Airlines flight 225 crashed just after taking off from the Detroit airport. One hundred fifty-five people were killed. One survived: a 4-year-old from Tempe, Arizona, named Cecelia. News accounts say when rescuers found Cecelia they did not believe she had been on the plane. Investigators first assumed Cecelia had been a passenger in one of the cars on the highway onto which the airliner crashed. But when the passenger register for the flight was checked, there was Cecelia’s name. Cecelia survived because, as the plane was falling, Cecelia’s mother, Paula Chican, unbuckled her own seat belt, got down on her knees in front of her daughter, wrapped her arms and body around Cecelia, and then would not let her go. Nothing could separate that child from her parent’s love — not tragedy or disaster, not the fall or the flames that followed, not height nor depth, not life nor death.” This is the kind of love our heavenly Father has for us. We are secure in the fact that he will do whatever is necessary to keep us near his heart. He will wrap himself around us and never let go. We are safe in him.
Through the years, as a pastor, I have known many people who did not feel this way about God. They were constantly afraid they were going to accidently slip away from God and no longer be a Christian. They would act as though they could, as they put it, “lose their salvation” at any moment. They would question whether or not they were still “saved.” It was almost as if they thought they could tick God off without realizing it. One wrong move and he would disown them. Whether they realized it or not, they saw God as unpredictable, ill-tempered and angry. He was looking for all the things that were wrong with them instead of the things that were right in them. They did not understand grace. Somehow they had never read the scripture that says, “The Lord is. . . patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
When you want to give up because you think God has given up on you, you need to understand several things. The first is: You cannot “lose” your salvation. You don’t wake up one morning and realize God is gone. I have known people who received sudden and startling bad news from their marriage partner. As far as they knew everything was fine in their marriage, when suddenly their spouse announced that they were not in love with them anymore and wanted a divorce. It came out of the blue. One day they thought they were in love and their relationship was secure, and the next day there was nothing. Some people act as though God’s love is just as uncertain and undependable. One day he finds you acceptable, and the next day he is leaving you.
You cannot “lose” your salvation. It is not like losing your keys. One minute they are in your hand and the next you cannot find them to save your life. You don’t misplace them purposely, keys just have a way of disappearing. They grow legs and go someplace where you cannot find them. Your relationship with God isn’t like that. You cannot accidently misplace it. It isn’t going to grow legs and walk away from you. If you do something wrong, God is not going to throw you away. Even in the Old Testament we find a God of infinite patience and love. The Lord passed before Moses saying, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin” (Exodus 34:6-7).
God is not against us, he is for us. His real interest is in forgiving our sin, not punishing our sin. His arms are continually stretched out toward us, inviting us to come to him. Even when we rebel and move away from him, he pursues us. Jesus said that God is like the shepherd who loses a sheep and leaves the rest of the flock to find the one who is lost. It is much harder to get away from God than you imagine, and it is impossible to just misplace him. This was the experience of the Psalm writer who said, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast” (Psalm 139:7-10). The Psalmist knew that God is always searching for us, always with us, always longing for us. His love is always pursuing us, even when we are running from him. It is our nature to run from God; it is God’s nature to pursue us wherever we go. Paul wrote: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).
The second important fact that must consider is this: You can ultimately “reject” your salvation. You cannot arbitrarily lose your salvation, but you can reject it. The reason is that God never takes away our free will. He is always willing and able to save us, but there may come a time when we are no longer willing to be saved. God continues to love us, but we may no longer love him. He chooses us, but we may not choose him. I’m not sure how that happens. Truthfully, it mystifies me. Many people would say that if this happens the person never really was saved in the first place — they pretended to be a Christian, but they never really were converted. The renewing and regenerating power of the Holy Spirit never really entered their lives. I tend to think this way myself, for it is almost impossible for me to understand how someone who has really experienced the forgiveness and love of God could possibly turn away from something as wonderful as this — leaving the One who created you and loves you more than anyone else. But if these people were never Christians, they really fooled me.
For certain, if this happens, it is not something that happens accidentally. It is a conscious, willful, deliberate act of the mind and heart that takes place over a period of time. But it is important to understand that if we cannot reject our salvation then we don’t really have free will. It means that God is going to save us whether we want him to or not. Let’s listen again to the passage we read together today and list the things that describe the person who has fallen away. They have been “enlightened.” That is, they have had their hearts and minds enlightened by the truth of God. They have “tasted the heavenly gift and shared in the Holy Spirit.” What else can this mean except they have experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives and received the gift of the forgiveness of God? These people also “tasted of the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age.” The Word of God was experienced by them as something good. They found help and encouragement as they read it. And they experienced the powers of the coming age, in that they had the power of eternal life working in them. But they fell away. How could this happen? One thing is for sure, it did not happen against their will, but in accordance with their will. It was not accidental. It was not something God took from them, it was something they threw away. They understood what they were doing more than someone who had never come to Christ. They experienced the realities of the Christian life, and after experiencing those things chose not to go with God any longer. They did not “fall away” like someone accidently fell off a cliff. They walked away — stomped away, if you will. Something disappointed them. God did not do what they wanted. They became offended at God, the church, or another Christian. They became allured by the things the world offered. As good as the things of God were which they tasted, they had more of an appetite for the things of the world. They purposely neglected their spiritual life to the point where they became overpowered by the sin in their lives and ended up in spiritual bondage.
But notice in this scripture that the problem is with us — not God. It is not that God is unable to forgive and heal them; it is that they who are no longer able to repent. They have turned off their consciences long enough that they no longer feel guilt. They can no longer feel sorry for their sin — they are enjoying it too much. Their ears became dull to the voice of God. Their eyes became blind to his goodness and mercy. Their hearts became so calloused that they could no longer respond to the love of God. It was their conscious and deliberate choice. The Bible says, “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace” (Hebrews 10:26-29). The writer goes on to say, “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31).
But let me be careful to say that this does not mean that if you give into a serious sin that you are no longer a Christian. On God’s side we can always be forgiven and continue our relationship with him — even if we repeat some serious sin. There is love and forgiveness waiting for us if we turn from our sin and turn to God. But the warning of Scripture is that if we continue in this way, knowing that what we are doing is wrong, the day may come when we are no longer able to respond to God. Our consciences become hardened and our hearts can no longer feel. Our minds can no longer appreciate truth. Jesus said that our eyes may no longer be able to see and our ears may no longer hear. Do you know that if you were placed in a totally dark room long enough, you would lose your sight? And if you were placed in a sound proof environment long enough, you would lose your hearing? There are actually fish who live deep in the ocean where there is no light who have eyes, but who are totally blind.
How does this work out in human experience? Actually, the Bible gives us two very vivid human examples: Peter and Judas. Both had been with Christ his entire ministry. Both preached, healed and ministered in the name of Christ. And both betrayed Christ and denied him. But one recovered from his sin and the other did not. Judas led the enemies of Christ to the place where Christ was staying. Peter spat out curses as he denied even knowing Christ in Christ’s darkest hour — and he did it three times. But it was Peter who emerged from this betrayal beaten, yet still alive spiritually. It was Judas who gave up on God and himself, and committed suicide. Jesus knew about both their sins before they committed them. He warned Peter and grieved over losing Judas. He prayed, “While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled” (John 17:12). Peter was able to still grieve over his sin and come back to God. Judas had evidently become hardened by becoming offended at Jesus and nursed a grudge over a long period of time. Perhaps he could not forgive Jesus for not becoming the political savior of Israel. Regardless, his final act was a deliberate and calculated event, not a spontaneous act of weakness born out of fear and self-preservation like that of Peter. Peter’s sin was repeated three times, but Judas’ sin was prepared for over a period time. Peter turned from his sin as soon as he did it. Judas regretted the consequences of what he had done, but he never felt guilty for betraying the person that at one time had been his best friend.
Judas could no longer feel sorrow for his sin. The Bible says, “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death” (2 Corinthians 7:10). When your heart is still tender toward God, you have a godly sorrow that drives you to God. When your heart is hard, you may have regret, and even remorse for what happened, but you give up and stop trying. You see yourself as a helpless victim with no responsibility for your actions. You become self-centered and avoid the pain and difficulty of truly living for God. You don’t want to have to walk the narrow way, and ultimately God allows you to have your way.
The final point is: You must persevere. Joanna was telling me about a spiritual retreat for college freshman which she attended at New York University. The speaker looked around at the students and said, “If the statistics are right, two thirds of you will no longer be walking with the Lord at your graduation.” She said that even though the group prospered and grew, the retreat leader’s prediction came true. New people had come, but only a third of those in her class who were originally at the retreat were still living for God at graduation. The important key here is that you must take responsibility for your spiritual life. Some people feel God should do it all and they shouldn’t have to do anything. Others feel that they were saved once and that is all there is to it. But God wants you to not only be born, he wants you to grow. What would we think if these wonderful babies that have been born in our church did not grow after they came into the world? We would be extremely concerned. We should be just as concerned about Christians who are born into the spiritual world, but who are not growing. Some Christians think nothing of missing a week of scripture reading and not spending any time in the presence of God. What if you went without food and drink for the same amount of time you have fasted from God? We need to grow up and do what is necessary to mature in our faith.
In the scripture today, it talked of thorns and thistles growing in a field instead of the expected crop. Thorns and thistles grow in a field that has not been worked. There has been no tilling, no planting, no watering, and there are only weeds. The same is true of your life. “Why don’t I feel closer to God,” some people say. Because you have done nothing to get closer to God. You have done nothing and received nothing. This is not a game. It takes effort. You don’t have to continue to live in defeat, but it means that you have to be intentional about your relationship with God and your walk of faith. The writer of Hebrews bemoaned the fact that the people he was writing to had put so little effort into their faith. He wrote: “In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil” (Hebrews 5:12-14). When you love God you want to be with him and do those things that bring you close to him.
Two years before my father died, my parents once again opened the box containing all the love letters which they had written each other while my father was away during World War II in the Army Air Corps. They decided that each evening they would open the box and read each other a letter they had written. After the children had been raised and retirement had come, they were remembering what had brought them to this place. They started with the earliest letters and went in order through the creased pages whose ink was now fading. Night after night they reminded each other of their love by reading those wonderful words that lived like magic in their hearts, and kept their love alive during the war. While the war was raging on, and life was uncertain, they treasured each letter that arrived. Because they were temporarily separated, they read them alone — not once, but over and over again. As they read, they could see the other’s face and hear the other’s voice through the words. Romance swelled in their hearts as they longed for each other. Those letters were among their most important possessions.
In one Book we have many love letters from God bound in one volume. As we read them, we hear his voice and imagine we see his face. Love swells in our hearts as we long for the day when we will be together in the way we have always dreamed. But for now, we are content to read the letters. Each day we bring another one out and let him read it to us, and we respond by pouring out our love for him. Only this constant reminder can keep our love strong until the struggle is over and our heavenly Lover returns.
Never give up. His love for you is unending. He has written his love in a book.
Rodney J. Buchanan
July 28, 2002
Mulberry St. UMC
Mt. Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
