THE FEAR OF FINAL FALLING
A DARK FEAR haunts the minds of many who are coming to
Christ; they are afraid that they shall not persevere to the end.
I have heard the seeker say: "If I were to cast my soul upon
Jesus, yet peradventure I should after all draw back into
perdition. I have had good feelings before now, and they have
died away. My goodness has been as the morning cloud, and as the
early dew. It has come on a sudden, lasted for a season, promised
much, and then vanished away."
I believe that this fear is often the father of the fact;
and that some who have been afraid to trust Christ for all time,
and for all eternity, have failed because they had a temporary
faith, which never went far enough to save them. They set out
trusting to Jesus in a measure, but looking to themselves for
continuance and perseverance in the heavenward way; and so they
set out faultily, and, as a natural consequence, turned back
before long. If we trust to ourselves for our holding on we shall
not hold on. Even though we rest in Jesus for a part of our
salvation, we shall fail if we trust to self for anything. No
chain is stronger than its weakest link: if Jesus be our hope for
everything, except one thing, we shall utterly fail, because in
that one point we shall come to nought. I have no doubt whatever
that a mistake about the perseverance of the saints has prevented
the perseverance of many who did run well. What did hinder them
that they should not continue to run? They trusted to themselves
for that running, and so they stopped short. Beware of mixing
even a little of self with the mortar with which you build, or
you will make it untempered mortar, and the stones will not hold
together. If you look to Christ for your beginnings, beware of
looking to yourself for your endings. He is Alpha. See to it that
you make Him Omega also. If you begin in the Spirit you must not
hope to be made perfect by the flesh. Begin as you mean to go on,
and go on as you began, and let the Lord be all in all to you.
Oh, that God, the Holy Spirit, may give us a very clear idea of
where the strength must come from by which we shall be preserved
until the day of our Lord's appearing!
Here is what Paul once said upon this subject when he was
writing to the Corinthians:
Our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall also confirm you unto the
end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus
Christ. God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the
fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord (1 Cor. 1:8, 9).
This language silently admits a great need, by telling us
how it is provided for. Wherever the Lord makes a provision, we
are quite sure that there was a need for it, since no
superfluities encumber the covenant of grace. Golden shields hung
in Solomon's courts which were never used, but there are none
such in the armory of God. What God has provided we shall surely
need. Between this hour and the consummation of all things every
promise of God and every provision of the covenant of grace will
be brought into requisition. The urgent need of the believing
soul is confirmation, continuance, final perseverance,
preservation to the end. This is the great necessity of the most
advanced believers, for Paul was writing to saints at Corinth,
who were men of a high order, of whom he could say, "I thank my
God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given
you by Jesus Christ." Such men are the very persons who most
assuredly feel that they have daily need of new grace if they are
to hold on, and hold out, and come off conquerors at the last. If
you were not saints you would have no grace, and you would feel
no need of more grace; but because you are men of God, therefore
you feel the daily demands of the spiritual life. The marble
statue requires no food; but the living man hungers and thirsts,
and he rejoices that his bread and his water are made sure to
him, for else he would certainly faint by the way. The believer's
personal wants make it inevitable that he should daily draw from
the great source of all supplies; for what could he do if he
could not resort to his God?
This is true of the most gifted of the saints--of those men
at Corinth who were enriched with all utterance and with all
knowledge. They needed to be confirmed to the end, or else their
gifts and attainments would prove their ruin. If we had the
tongues of men and of angels, if we did not receive fresh grace,
where should we be? If we had all experience till we were fathers
in the church--if we had been taught of God so as to understand
all mysteries--yet we could not live a single day without the
divine life flowing into us from our Covenant Head. How could we
hope to hold on for a single hour, to say nothing of a lifetime,
unless the Lord should hold us on? He who began the good work in
us must perform it unto the day of Christ, or it will prove a
painful failure.
This great necessity arises very much from our own selves.
In some there is a painful fear that they shall not persevere in
grace because they know their own fickleness. Certain persons are
constitutionally unstable. Some men are by nature conservative,
not to say obstinate; but others are as naturally variable and
volatile. Like butterflies they flit from flower to flower, till
they visit all the beauties of the garden, and settle upon none
of them. They are never long enough in one place to do any good;
not even in their business nor in their intellectual pursuits.
Such persons may well be afraid that ten, twenty, thirty, forty,
perhaps fifty years of continuous religious watchfulness will be
a great deal too much for them. We see men joining first one
church and then another, till they box the compass. They are
everything by turns and nothing long. Such have double need to
pray that they may be divinely confirmed, and may be made not
only steadfast but unmoveable, or otherwise they will not be
found "always abounding in the work of the Lord."
All of us, even if we have no constitutional temptation to
fickleness, must feel our own weakness if we are really quickened
of God. Dear reader, do you not find enough in any one single day
to make you stumble? You that desire to walk in perfect holiness,
as I trust you do; you that have set before you a high standard
of what a Christian should be--do you not find that before the
breakfast things are cleared away from the table, you have
displayed enough folly to make you ashamed of yourselves? If we
were to shut ourselves up in the lone cell of a hermit,
temptation would follow us; for as long as we cannot escape from
ourselves we cannot escape from incitements to sin. There is that
within our hearts which should make us watchful and humble before
God. If he does not confirm us, we are so weak that we shall
stumble and fall; not overturned by an enemy, but by our own
carelessness. Lord, be thou our strength. We are weakness itself.
Besides that, there is the weariness which comes of a long
life. When we begin our Christian profession we mount up with
wings as eagles, further on we run without weariness; but in our
best and truest days we walk without fainting. Our pace seems
slower, but it is more serviceable and better sustained. I pray
God that the energy of our youth may continue with us so far as
it is the energy of the Spirit and not the mere fermentation of
proud flesh. He that has long been on the road to Heaven finds
that there was good reason why it was promised that his shoes
should be iron and brass, for the road is rough. He has
discovered that there are Hills of Difficulty and Valleys of
Humiliation; that there is a Vale of Deathshade, and, worse
still, a Vanity Fair--and all these are to be traversed. If there
be Delectable Mountains (and, thank God, there are,) there are
also Castles of Despair, the inside of which pilgrims have too
often seen. Considering all things, those who hold out to the end
in the way of holiness will be "men wondered at."
"O world of wonders, I can say no less." The days of a
Christian's life are like so many Koh-i-noors of mercy threaded
upon the golden string of divine faithfulness. In Heaven we shall
tell to angels, and principalities, and powers, the unsearchable
riches of Christ which were spent upon us, and enjoyed by us
while we were here below. We have been kept alive on the brink of
death. Our spiritual life has been a flame burning on in the
midst of the sea, a stone that has remained suspended in the air.
It will amaze the universe to see us enter the pearly gate,
blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. We ought to be
full of grateful wonder if kept for an hour; and I trust we are.
If this were all, there would be enough cause for anxiety;
but there is far more. We have to think of what a place we live
in. The world is a howling wilderness to many of God's people.
Some of us are greatly indulged in the providence of God, but
others have a stern fight of it. We begin our day with prayer,
and we hear the voice of holy song full often in our houses; but
many good people have scarcely risen from their knees in the
morning before they are saluted with blasphemy. They go out to
work, and all day long they are vexed with filthy conversation
like righteous Lot in Sodom. Can you even walk the open streets
without your ears being afflicted with foul language? The world
is no friend to grace. The best we can do with this world is to
get through it as quickly as we can, for we dwell in an enemy's
country. A robber lurks in every bush. Everywhere we need to
travel with a "drawn sword" in our hand, or at least with that
weapon which is called all-prayer ever at our side; for we have
to contend for every inch of our way. Make no mistake about this,
or you will be rudely shaken out of your fond delusion. O God,
help us, and confirm us to the end, or where shall we be?
True religion is supernatural at its beginning, supernatural
in its continuance, and supernatural in its close. It is the work
of God from first to last. There is great need that the hand of
the Lord should be stretched out still: that need my reader is
feeling now, and I am glad that he should feel it; for now he
will look for his own preservation to the Lord who alone is able
to keep us from failing, and glorify us with His Son.
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