Eternal Security
Revelation 3:4-5: “You have a
few names even in
The best way to understand
these overcomer passages, which is what we are focusing on here in verses 4
& 5, is to understand that when we enter into salvation, when we trust
Jesus Christ as our savior, at the instant that we
believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross as a substitute for us, we receive
eternal life. We dont receive partial life,
intermittent life, the potential of eternal life, we receive eternal life. We are
adopted into the family of God, we are justified; all of these various things
take place at the instant of salvation. It is like an eternal contract with God
that cant be broken. We not only have an eternal
contract that secures that life, we also have incentive clauses. That is
related to rewards and blessings. That is the focus of these overcomer passages
that we find.
Verse 4 begins, “But.” The
King James version didnt
translate the “but.” This is a conjunction of contrast. “…you have a few names
even in
First of all, it is the Lord
Jesus Christ who is evaluating these local churches. He is presented in this
evaluation report as the one who has the seven spirits of God and the seven
starts. He is pictured as a judge. This goes back to the image of Jesus Christ
as he appeared to John in chapter one, and because if its significance to what
we are going to read we will go back and read verses 12-15 of that chapter to
remind us of what that image consisted: “And I turned to see the voice that spoke
with me. And having turned, I saw seven golden lampstands;
and in the midst of the seven lampstands one like
unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girded about
the chest with a golden band. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as
white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like unto
fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many
waters.” All of this is of a brilliant white, shining image of the Lord Jesus
Christ. His hair is white, His robe is white, He wears this garment that is
down to the feet and it is girded about with a golden band. The imagery there
of this robe and a golden band is the image of a priest. He is coming as a
prist-judge. That is the thrust of that image. When we come to understanding
verses 4 & 5 of chapter three where we talk about those in Sardis who have
not defiled their garments and that the overcomer will be clothed in white
garments, it is the same kind of garment that the Lord Jesus Christ is wearing
in Revelation chapter one. This indicates that the reward for the overcomer is
related to the priestly ministry. We know that when we return with the Lord
Jesus Christ in the Millennial kingdom we will be
reigning as priests and kings. So today we are in the training mode in
preparation for being able to reign with the Lord Jesus Christ during the Millennial kingdom. So the maturity and the capacity for
wisdom and the application of doctrine that we develop that we develop during
this age is specifically in preparation for our role as those who will reign as
priests and kings during the Millennial kingdom.
The
commandment for the believers to remember how they had received and heard. That commandment right there tells us that Jesus is
addressing them as a congregation of believers, not as a congregation of
unbelievers. That needs to be made clear because when we get into understanding
the crucial phrase in the middle of verse 5, “I will not blot out his name from
the book of life,” there are those who want to come along and talk about the
fact that they can lose their salvation. Furthermore, there are those who want
to equate the overcomer with all believers, and that those who dont overcome were simply “false professors,” they just had
a false profession of faith in Christ and werent
truly saved. Whenever we see anyone adding some sort of adverb to the word “saved”
then they are basically in the Lordship salvation camp. What Lordship salvation
is, is basically the idea that the only way that you can know that you are
truly saved in the long haul is if you what they call works that are in keeping
with righteousness. That is, if you dont have the
right kind of works you really werent saved to begin
with, you just had a false profession; and the only way you can know you were saved
is by the works, the fruit produced in the course of your life. So up to the
point you die you cant truly have an assurance of your
salvation because the real test of whether or not your faith was genuine was
these kind of works. So Lordship salvation always produces fruit inspectors who
are trying to figure out if you have the right kind of works.
At the very core of this evaluation
report Jesus is indicating that there are two categories of believers in this
congregation. There is one category of believers who are failures at this
point. They are not walking by the Holy Spirit, they are not producing anything
by the Holy Spirit, theres no fruit of the Spirit, no
spiritual growth, no spiritual advance, they are not developing any capacity
for righteousness at all, but they are saved. If they werent
saved in verse three, which is addressed to these believers who are failures, these
who have the name of being alive but are dead, the verse would be absolutely
meaningless unless they were saved. If they werent
saved, what would they be remembering? So it is clear that verse three
addresses the large segment of this congregation that are believers who had
become complacent in their spiritual life, they are no longer walking by the
Holy Spirit, they just have an external form of godliness of the spiritual life
but are by their practice, their day-to-day life, denying the genuine power of
the spiritual life, which is the walk by means of God the Holy Spirit. So
having challenged these failure believers, these believers who are not going
anywhere, with what they need to do to recover, there is a positive statement
of potential reward to those who are hanging in there in their spiritual life
and are going forward. This is the focus of verse four. It is contrasting the operationally
dead majority with those few who are spiritually vibrant and advancing in their
spiritual life.
“…a few names even in
Then verse 5 states: “He who
overcomes, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out
his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father,
and before his angels.” Just a note here—we will have to come back and deal
with this later: he who overcomes in context is clearly in contrast to these
operationally dead believers who are not overcomers. The reason to say that is
because in much of the commentaries that we read on Revelation and much of the
teaching we hear on Revelation the concept of an overcomer is equated to a
believer: everyone who is a believer; everyone who is an overcomer is a
believer; because of a passage in 1 John which says that all of us have
overcome the world because we have believed in Jesus Christ. Many people take
that passage to indicate that overcoming equals those who have expressed faith
in Christ. But the is there is, is the faith there is terms of phase one faith
justification for salvation, or is it talking about ongoing trust in Christ and
the spiritual assets He has given us in the spiritual life.
The reason we are bypassing
several things in verses four and five is because when we look at these two
verses they hang together. You have to interpret the whole thing, you have to
understand what they are saying, and the core issue is in the middle of verse
five, which we have to understand, and that is the phrase, “and I will not blot
out his name out of the book of life.” This is a difficult passage to
interpret, there are a lot of different things that are written in it, but in
some sense we have to understand what is going on in verse 5, and then we back
our way out to understand everything else that is going on. There are a couple
of different ways in which we have to interpret this phrase. The first is to
understand the phrase “blotting out his name” as a reference to losing salvation.
Since the name is originally written in the book of life, if you have it
blotted out or removed it would suggest that the person has lost their
salvation. The other option is that whatever blotting out his name means, it doesnt refer to losing ones salvation.
The idea that a person can
lose his salvation is in direct contrast to a doctrine known as eternal
security or assurance of salvation. We hear both terms and they refer to the
same thing: that the believer is secure in his salvation, and from the instant
of salvation has because of the internal witness of God the Holy Spirit an
assurance of their salvation. The idea that you can lose your salvation is an
idea that is usually associated with a theological system known as Arminianism.
The idea that you can lose salvation
fails of various fronts
1)
It fails because it
assumes that you can commit some sin or series of sins that is too great for
the grace of God.
2)
Secondly, it
assumes that you can commit some sin or series of sins about which the omniscience
of God was ignorant and therefore it wasnt paid for
by Christ on the cross.
3)
Another failure,
it assumes that you do something to merit the approval of God to be saved, and
thus you can do something to lose that favour.
Eternal Security
1)
Definition:
Eternal security is the work of God which guarantees that Gods free gift of
salvation is eternal, and cannot be lost, abrogated, nullified, or reversed by
any thought, act, or change of belief in the person saved.
2)
God the Fathers
purposes in salvation cannot be overridden. When we get into Romans 8:29, 30
the same group that He foreknew is a group that He predestines, calls,
justifies, and redeems. Nobody gets dropped out. “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.”
Those He justifies, every one of them, He glorifies. He doesnt
lose a few on the way because they stop believing in Jesus.
3)
God the Fathers
omnipotence is more powerful than human attempts to negate salvation. He is
more powerful than anything that we can do. He is powerful enough to provide a salvation
that covers every sin and He is able to keep the believer secure. Jude 24, “Now
unto him that is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless
before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.” John
4)
God is
omniscient, He knows all the knowable. He knows every single sin that you will
ever commit and he was able to impute that to Jesus Christ on the cross. God is
omnipotent, therefore between His omnipotence and His omniscience He is able to
keep us secure because He had all the sins paid for. No sin that you commit
surprises God, no sin was left undealt with, no sin is too great for the plan
of God or the grace of God. People who think they can lose their salvation are
just arrogant; they think they can outdo Gods plan.
5)
No one, angelic
or human, can bring a charge against or condemn those who are saved, Romans
8:33, 34: “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of Gods elect? It is God that
justifies.
6)
34 Who
is he that condemns? It is Christ that died, rather, that is risen
again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for
us.” The core issue is justification. At the instant of faith alone in Christ
alone, the first thing that happens logically is that the Father imputes the
righteousness of Christ to the believer and he is declared just. You can’t be
condemned if you possess the righteousness of Christ.
7)
When we understand
the dynamics and complexities of what God must do to save even one unbeliever
we realize how complex it would be to lose salvation. All kinds of things
happen at the instant of salvation: we are justified, redeemed, indwelt by the
Holy Spirit, given new life, all kinds of things. There are so many things that
happen at salvation that to think that one can lose his salvation means that
God has to reverse all of that, and it is absurd.
8)
According to John
chapter 17 Jesus Christ is praying continuously for us to be kept in salvation.
Jesus’ prayers always get answered. He is constantly praying that the Father
will keep us, so we can’t be lost.
9) Christ as the head of the body cannot sever a member once it is joined to the body. This is one of those things that happens at salvation, we become part of the body of Christ. It is just absurd in terms of the imagery of Scripture to think that you can lose your salvation. 1 Corinthians 12:13. We become part of the body of Christ and cannot become unbaptized or amputated to lose our salvation. Cf. 2 Timothy 2:11-13.