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There are certain questions that are in a class all to themselves. They are asked of every age and culture, springing from the human spirit as naturally as breath, and will be with us as
long as there are people to ask them. One such question has been very difficult to answer, plaguing the minds of our brightest scholars for centuries. It is of such a nature as to stir us all to uneasiness and
concern. The more thoughtfully we consider this question the more desperately we driven to look for an answer. I have taken my place in its debate many… hundreds… of times. And though it may seem to be presumption, I think I have
finally found a train of thought that will help any thoughtful person rest when they consider it. The question is this: Can I be sure that I will go to heaven?
Long ago, a fine young man had the privilege of asking Jesus Christ this question, and so he did. "What good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?" Though in a slightly different form, the young man's question is
essentially the same. He assumes an affirmative answer to Can I know, and continues with the obvious, How?
He takes here a perfectly natural step; for to obtain the answer to the first question and not the second is merely troublesome. In order to live in peace, we must eventually answer both.
In His characteristic manner, Christ answered directly: "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." Now, this simple response has been both a trouble and a blessing to us ever since He said it. It
has brought us together to challenge each other. It has driven us to think and to reason. And though we may not be able to rest in Christ's answer, at least He has provoked us all to try and grapple with the importance of the
question. Perhaps this was His purpose in answering as He did, to provide us a clue, an initial direction to pursue in our search. Perhaps it is only in struggling deeply with this kind of answer that we prepare
ourselves to receive a much more comprehensive one, not one that contradicts, but one that completes Christ's answer in a way that allows us to finally rest in His peace. Let us then thoughtfully consider this
question, as well Christ's answer. Let it spark in us again our struggle and hunger to answer the matter well... and then let us do so correctly, with absolute finality. All we need assume in our time together is
that the Bible is true, that the God of the Bible is good, and that He intends for us to live sincerely, thoughtfully, and joyfully. Nothing more. First let us observe that while the Can I know
portion of our question has many, many variations, it has only two possible answers: Yes and No. A third response, Maybe, is merely an I don't know, and therefore not an
answer at all. Either we can be, in this life, absolutely sure of eternal life… or we cannot be absolutely sure. It is an all or nothing kind of question. Let us also note that Christ, in His
response, refrained from correcting the young man's presumption of an affirmative answer to Can I know. Christ in providing an answer to How
without correcting the young man, seems to suggest that, yes, in fact, we can know -- in this life -- that we have eternal life. In contrast however, from my personal experience in this debate, most of us
will interpret Christ's answer as follows: "No, we can't be absolutely sure of Heaven until we get there." The reasoning that produces this response is plain enough: if salvation depends upon keeping the commandments, and
therefore upon choices I have not yet made, then I may make choices before I die that will exclude me from Heaven. This seems so obviously conclusive that one might think it should end the debate. Not so. There are,
in spite of Christ's response, a few intelligent people who claim to have discovered a way to obtain an unconditional guarantee of personal salvation regardless of any subsequent choice or experience. They insist that we can be
eternally safe while still alive on Earth, and that this condition is not be subject to the voluntary will. They assert that there is absolutely nothing one can do to forfeit Heaven after attaining this state. This is often called
a "once saved always saved" position. Now, in light of Christ's plain response, one might protest, "How can any thoughtful person believe such a thing?" The answer is surprisingly simple. Certainly, Christ did
reveal a way to enter into life, but there is nothing about His answer that is exclusive or exhaustive. Christ did not say that keeping the commandments is the… only…
way to get into Heaven. In fact, if one thinks about the matter at all, keeping the commandments had better not
be the only way… for it is, in truth, no way for a sinner at all. Honestly now, who has kept the commandments?! Who can? This trend in the discussion is inevitable. When given such an answer as, "Keep the
commandments," we will all quite naturally ask, as the young man did, "Which?" We are disarmed with the simplicity and the impossibility of the standard, and immediately seek to qualify it in some way. We are aware of our
inadequacy, and the standard in its raw form allows for none. We must find a way to clarify, to lower the bar, to lessen the degree. Christ understands our concern, but offers us no hope. He replies, mentioning
several commandments which seem easy enough to keep: "Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother." So far, so good… at least
for those who have not thought carefully up to this point. There are no surprises here; Christ has merely listed those of the Ten Commandments with horizontal perspective that seem easiest to keep, those which tell us how to treat
our fellow mortals. These commandments seem fair enough, as they can be understood to be more external in nature. They don't at first appear to deal directly with our impregnable selfishness. We might possibly qualify for Heaven
with such a reasonable standard, if that were all Christ said. It is no coincidence that Christ ends with, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." He has taken a sharp turn at the end. This is not one of the
Ten, but one of the Two on which the Ten hang. In fact, this one particular commandment is the very root of the entire horizontal scope of the Law of God. It deals with our selfishness directly, completely and exhaustively. For any
thoughtful person now, if they had harbored any faint hope of meriting Heaven by keeping the Law, they have given up now. There is no escape … we are, in fact, doomed if this is the only way to Heaven. Many of us,
like the young man in our story, will not see this. We refuse to acknowledge the impossibility of keeping this simple command to love our neighbor as ourselves. The young man, as if completely missing the import of this last
requirement, persisted in his hope, "All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?" Though he persists in a shallow self-justification, he must still admit that he has no assurance of eternal life… as anyone in
this way will always and ultimately find. We must have something more. What does Jesus Christ offer this young man? "Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to poor, and
thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me." Is there any hope here? "When the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions." Ah! The disappointment is acute,
wrenching, severe! Give up all! Give up everything you hold dear… nay give your very self away to Christ! Christ does not lower the standard for any of us. Rather, He presses it to the full. No compromise, no mercy.
But many of us will not give up so easily as this fine young man did. We will not go away, we will not relent. The matter, ultimately, is non-negotiable. There is nowhere to go, no other place but in Christ to find
an answer. We insist that there must be some way to merit Heaven in our own strength, at least partially, without being absolutely perfect. We will claim that we can find most of our salvation in Christ and then manage to keep it
by obedience of some unspecified degree… and that we will then be fine. But when pressed to define this "unspecified degree" of obedience, there is eventually a blank stare. There is no scripture to turn to for support here, only
conjecture. And to base one's eternal welfare on naked conjecture is… well… foolishness indeed. To press the matter intelligently, we must ask the inevitable question, "Once we have salvation, exactly how good do we
have to be to keep it?" What is the minimum standard of obedience required to maintain personal eternal safety once salvation is obtained. Not generally, not vaguely… but exactly! When we are dealing with
consequences of this nature, we must be precise. We must be certain. How can we possibly define, with certainty, any other standard than absolute perfection? The ultimate problem in departing from perfection as our
standard is that we must have some reliable way to measure our own goodness as a matter of degree in comparison to perfection. We must consider motive, and we must have the mind of God to determine what constitutes Good and
Bad. These kinds of tools are not provided for us… in the Bible, or anywhere else… and so we must invent them. We presume to have a way to measure ourselves fairly and accurately, even when the best of men,
when face to face with Perfection in a holy God, fell on their faces in absolute terror because of their deep, intrinsic filthiness. Consider Job's, "I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes!" (Job 42:6) Consider Isaiah's "Woe
is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts." (Is 6:5) What hope have mere mortals under the scrutinizing,
penetrating gaze of absolute holiness? There is none, my friend, there is absolutely none. Evidently, there is no lower standard. If you want to merit Heaven on your own in any manner, you must be absolutely
perfect. Do not miss this. Make no mistake about it; even the disciples, hearing this, were shocked. "When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved?" Well, if we cannot
lower the standard, and if we have no reliable measure to certainly know when we have broken this standard, and by how much we have violated it, then we are left with the prospect of living our lives one of two ways. We may either
live every moment of our lives in absolute dread of spending eternity in the lake of fire, or we may live thoughtlessly and carelessly in spite of such danger. In either case, we must live in a manner which we initially assumed
could never be God's intention for us. This is what mathematicians call Proof by Contradiction. If we, through careful consideration of what it means to reject "once saved always saved," are forced into a
position where we cannot ever know for certain that we have eternal life, then we have violated the only simple axioms with which we began. This is actually a precise and conclusive proof that will stand in any court of law, and in
any legitimate classroom. It has a completeness and a thoroughness that can withstand any and all inspection. You are invited to do so, for as long as you like.
As we do so, lest we think that eternal security is a change of subject from Can I know, please note that we are trying to actually get to Heaven. We seek to finally arrive there in actuality, not find some
theoretical, meaningless place where if we happened to die "at this instant" that we would go. Such an improbable event really has no bearing on the matter, for we are not "dying this instant." If, in actuality, we do finally end
up in Hell, then it is quite a stretch to say that we ever did find something properly called "salvation" in this life. Indeed, we must not lose sight of the fact that we are seeking to know how to finally and
actually enter the pearly gates, and we must settle for nothing less. Until we find a place where we are secure, a place where finally ending up in Hell is highly improbable, nay impossible, we are not safe. We must not only
know how
to get to Heaven, we must also know how continue in this knowledge along the way. Therefore eternal security, this "once saved always saved" concept, cannot be decoupled from salvation itself in any meaningful way. If we reject "once saved always saved," claiming we have a salvation that can be lost, we are both
saying nothing and we have nothing. The two concepts Can I have salvation? and Can I lose it? are one and the same. This fact must be firmly grasped and understood. Further,
in order to be practically helpful, whatever we accept as an answer to these questions, whatever we finally trust as a personal guarantee of eternal life, it must produce in our souls an actual confidence and assurance that is
consistent with the claim. It is simply unacceptable to live with doubt and uncertainty with respect to our own personal eternal fate. When we hear, "Don't rely on your feelings," we must resist. We cannot sanely relinquish real
assurance of eternal life as a perfectly natural consequence of being human, or of being under spiritual attack. If our answer does not bring with it an accompanying, persistent internal witness that is consistent with the claim,
we may rightly ask, "What good is it?" The reason we must be so insistent in this matter is simple: no one can afford to be wrong about eternal life. If there is a way to be sure of going to Heaven and we are not
sure, at any time, then this cannot be a good thing by any measure. As the great mathematician Blaise Pascal proposed in his famous Consider the following texts: "Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men?" (2 Cor 5:11) "Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that
have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him." (Luke 12:5) "Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be
broken, but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder." (Luke 20:18) "Our God is a consuming fire." (Heb 12:29) To say it plainly, to deliberately choose to live for any length of time with any
higher prospect of going to Hell than what is absolutely necessary… is to live in debilitating, paralyzing fear, even in insanity. It is either this or to live in thoughtless carelessness, as if, while sitting in pitch blackness
and being warned that we are on the edge of a great precipice, we might consider frolicking about in a game of tag. To play carelessly on the edge of eternal damnation… this is insane, if anything is. To scoff, to ridicule, to
dismiss, to wave the hand and turn the head away… we do not do this in any other realm. When presented with any real potential of danger, every sane soul takes sincere precaution, explores, tests, seeks… in all honesty and
integrity… to ensure safety as best it can be had. We have now only one reasonable course: find a way to live such that the probability of finding our eternal home in Hell is zero. This can be done, theoretically,
in two ways. The first is to prove that such a place does not exist at all. The second is to obtain an absolute assurance that one is safe from it if it does happen to exist. The first option is implausible. One
cannot prove that something does not exist unless one is able to explore and search out every possible location, or prove by some logical deduction that conditions required for such a place to exist are impossible to construct.
This is clearly not an option. If there is a God, He can certainly make such a place as we describe. We would be left to prove that He does not exist, but this is another impossibility since God could easily be beyond and outside
the realm of any algorithm proposed to locate Him. Philosophically, the atheist is stuck here. Regardless of the tact, the probability of the existence of an eternal Hell will always be positive. It does not matter how small the
probability is, so long as it is not zero. Any positive number multiplied by infinity is... well, infinity. We are forced then by logical argument to our only remaining option: prove that our probability of landing
in Hell is absolutely zero. Otherwise, we find ourselves living every moment face to face with infinite loss, and this is unacceptable. We are therefore obliged to search out and avoid this end with all diligence. The exact
requirements for finally obtaining and entering into eternal life will be understood and met at any cost, if in fact these conditions can
be understood and met. In other words, one must be of the mind that one will do all within one's power to establish and ensure eternal safety at all times. It is, by definition, the most important personal consideration in which one may be employed.
Now, if there is a Hell and a Creator, then it is pointless to pursue the answer to our question if the Creator is malevolent. If God is not good, then we may be sure that we can never be safe from Hell. It is then
reasonable, at least for the purposes of our present discussion, to presume as we have that the Creator is benevolent, and that He does not require that every living human being endure every waking moment in absolute dread of
eternal punishment. If He has created us to live sanely, yea even joyfully, then He has made a way for us to know for sure that we are safe from Hell. In other words, the character of God implies that we can live life knowing that
we are safe from Hell and assured of Heaven. The only remaining question is, How? Christ Himself, at the end of our story of the young man above, does in the end provide some real encouragement for us here.
"But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible." He also encourages us in another place, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall
be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened." To find all else but the answer to our question is to find nothing at all that is
really worth finding. In encouraging us to seek anything at all, Christ is encouraging us to find the answer to this most important question. He is telling us that there actually is a way to know that we are eternally safe. He is
also telling us that the answer is not found in ourselves, but in God. The second part of our question addresses this directly: How? First, we may review and reinforce our earlier observation: being in a
state of eternal safety does not depends upon our choices or behavior. We have shown this with reasonable certainty. If eternal safety does not depend upon our choices, then it must depend upon God alone, as Christ has just
affirmed. We have then arrived fairly easily at a place where a "once saved always saved" position is the only sane one possible. Further, we have shown that obtaining such a state is not based upon any attempt to
earn or maintain a worthiness to enter Heaven on our own. It must be the work of God, and it must be available to those who seek it. To say things plainly from another angle, we are talking about the Gospel itself
in this matter. Each of the two answers to the question, "Can I be sure of eternal life?" implies a fundamental difference in the Gospel itself. To say, "No," is to believe one gospel, which implicitly requires a dependence on
human will and works to obtain the final salvation of the soul. As we have seen, this cannot be rightly called a gospel, for there is nothing but horror in it. To answer, "No," as we have carefully established, is to live in
constant uncertainty concerning eternity, with no indication of salvation at all. To live in such uncertainty is to live either in debilitating fear or in blind, careless ignorance. Neither option is reasonable. So,
to establish our answer, let us turn to a plain statement in the book of 1 John that begins to answer our question: "These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have
eternal life." (1 John 5:13) We are told here that we may know that we have eternal life if we are among those that "believe on the name of the Son of God." Whatever this means, "believing on the name of the Son
of God" is critical in this matter of salvation. It may be true that many believing on the name of the Son of God might not know that they have eternal life, we cannot tell from this passage alone. All we can certainly tell is that
there is a way for those who believe on the name of the Son of God to know that they have eternal life, and to know this for sure. This shows us several things. First, it is possible to believe on the name of the
Son of God. We have here an indication that John wrote to people who were in this condition. He wrote to them when they were in this condition for the purpose of verifying and establishing in them a real and personal knowledge that
they actually had eternal life, and this implies that they could never lose it. Second, we can dismiss the idea that any general failings of our lives with respect to our daily works can cause us to lose our
salvation -- so long as we are believing on the name of the Son of God. Believing on the name of the Son of God is the only condition given in the text to establish and maintain the knowledge of eternal life. Salvation cannot be
lost by anyone believing on the name of the Son of God, for such believers can know that they still have eternal life if they are in this condition of believing on His name. Thirdly, the believer must be able to
discern when they are believing on the name of the Son of God and when they are not believing. This is implied from the text, that one may know that they have eternal life if they also know that they are among those that believe on
the name of the Son of God. We may prove this again by contradiction: if one cannot certainly know that they are believing on the name on the name of the Son of God, then one cannot know that John's words are directed to them and
that they themselves have eternal life. However, John wrote unto them for the express purpose that they might know that they have eternal life. By implication then we have, of necessity, that one be able to discern whether or not
they are actually believing on the name of the Son of God. There is real substance and reality to these words of God; they do not leave us dreaming in the clouds. Believers must be able to discern their own state
accurately and to live indefinitely in this state joyfully. This is clearly God's goal: "And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full." (1 John 1:4) We are able to know that we have eternal life,
and in that knowledge to live in continual joy. We will know that we have eternal life when we believe on the name of the Son of God. If we do not yet know what this means, we may seek God until we do understand what it means and
enjoy its practical reality in our lives. God intends for us to seek this state, to seek Him, until we find Him... and find ourselves safely in Him. We may be sure, knowledge of eternal life will bring a deep and lasting joy to
everyone who finds it. To believe on the name of the Son of God must be nothing more than this: to acknowledge and receive the Son's authority to speak on these matters, to agree with Him in what He has said and
done, and to be aligned with Him in what it implies. We must become convinced, deep down in the bedrock our souls that, "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosever believeth in Him should not perish,
but have everlasting life." (John 3:16) We must be convinced, unto joy, that "Christ died for the ungodly… for us…" such that, "being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him." (Rom 5) This is not, as we
have shown, the work of the human spirit; it is the gift of God. (Eph 2:8) If we do not know this, know that we are as safe from the wrath of God as Jesus Christ, based solely on what Christ has done on our behalf,
then it is indeed our own fault. God gives good gifts to every soul who pursues Him, who refuses to accept any other response from Him. "He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." (Heb 11:6). There is only
one thing that will keep us out of Heaven, and that is to be content to call God a liar, to fail to live as though what He has said is true. If you want to believe it, to believe Him, even this is the work of God, and an
encouragement to you to seek Him with all of your heart. I must say, THAT is good news! |
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