I remember it as if it were yesterday. I was sitting in my third grade class at Eastside Elementary School when the principal came over the intercom and announced that President Kennedy had been shot. Our teacher turned on the radio, and we soon learned from a choked-up Walter Cronkite that Kennedy had died. For those who were old enough to remember that day, we all know where we were and what we were doing when we got the news that the President had been assassinated. That made a lasting impression on us.
I also remember when Martin Luther King met his death at an assassin's bullet at a hotel in Memphis. I remember when my parents woke me up gently on a Saturday morning I believe to tell me that Bobby Kennedy had been shot and killed the night before while campaigning in California. Those were lasting impressions.
O.J. Simpson dazzled football fans the nation over with his lightning-fast speed, quick moves, and numerous touchdowns as a running back in college and in the pro ranks. To this day, though, I can't remember one of them, because the lasting impression I have of O.J. Simpson has nothing to do with football, but with charges of murder, his Bronco ride get-away, and the sham of a trial where he was acquitted "because the glove did not fit."
The same can be said of Michael Jackson. I wish I could say that I chiefly remember that little boy-teenager-young man with his incredible singing voice and dance moves. However, the lasting impression for me of MJ has nothing to do with the songs he sang or the moon walk he created, but the continuous disfiguring of his face and the pedophile accusations that hovered over him.
The lion of the Senate has died, and the era of Camelot has come to an end. To this day, I don't remember much about the speeches that Teddy Kennedy gave, or the votes he made in the Senate, or all the political posturing he did. What comes to my mind first and foremost when I think of Senator Edward Kennedy is when I saw unfold on TV at the age of fifteen the news about his car accident that killed a female passenger of his. I remember his walking around with a neck brace, and I remember his trying to defend his strange actions after the accident. I asked myself then how can a person get away with what he did. We know the answer to that question. Chappaquiddick and Mary Jo Kopechne made more a lasting impression on me than anything else associated with Senator Kennedy.
We all have our lasting impressions, and they differ from person to person, but lasting impressions are real and forever etched in our memories.
For those who discount the notion that a born again, forgiven, redeemed child of God is always at all times securely kept by God's grace, then we have to assume according to this line of thought that God is not able to make a lasting impression on us. Other events and other people can do that to us, but omnipotent God is somehow unable to complete what He started, that our salvation which is here today can be gone tomorrow, and what God did when He saved us can be easily erased, forgotten and discarded. So much for lasting divine impressions!
I find this line of thought repulsive and a slap in the face of a sovereign God. Salvation is not ours to lose; it is His to keep. The perseverance of the saints (the "P" in the acronym TULIP) is as scriptural as the deity of Christ and the inerrancy of Scripture. I can see, though, how a person can believe that our salvation is tentative at best. If a person believes that salvation is somehow a joint effort between God and man, that man had a pivotal role to play in his getting in by the exercise of his unregenerate will, then it only follows that man's will can play a pivotal role in his getting out. God is less than sovereign at the beginning of our salvation, and He is less than sovereign during our salvation. It has consistency going for it, but foolish consistency has nothing going for it.
If God got us in, then God can and will keep us in. "Being confident of this very thing, that God who began a good work in us will complete it at the day of Jesus Christ." (Philippians 1:6) If we don't believe in God's sovereign grace in our salvation, his unconditional election of lost sinners, his regenerating power through the effectual call of God's Spirit, then we are left with no confidence at all. If we began a good work in us, then it won't be completed at the day of Jesus Christ. If it is possible for us to lose our salvation, then it is not possible, it is not even probable, it is certain that we all will lose it. I pity the poor soul who lives under constant dread because he thinks what he does today may determine his eternal destiny, instead of believing that our salvation is determined by what was predetermined before the foundation of the world.
We look unto Jesus, "the author and finisher of our faith." (Hebrews 12:2) The One who authored or gave us the faith to believe in the first place is the same One who will see us cross the finish line. God is sovereign all the way through. Now that's a lasting impression.
Jesus could not have made it any plainer when He said in John 6:37, "All that the Father has given to me (election) shall come to me (irresistible grace), and him that comes to Me I will in no way cast out (perseverance of the saints)." Two verses later Jesus would state it again, "And this is the Father's will who has sent Me, that of all He has given me (election) I should lose nothing, but raise it up again at the last day (perseverance of the saints)."
Now what is it about those two verses we can not understand?
My New Testament college professor put it wisely and succinctly, "When you see a falling star, you know it is not a star, because stars do not fall. Meteors do, but not stars." What about all those innumerable professing Christians that give no evidence of a changed life and seem to have fallen? What about all those "inactive" church members (a category unheard of in the New Testament)?
Could it be when we get away from teaching and preaching that salvation is solely the work of God, then we are more inclined to resort to means and measures where we play on people's emotions to squeeze a decision out of them, so the end result much of the time is not a convert of God, but a proud convert of ours? No wonder God has not made a lasting impression on many folks like that. If we begin a work in others, don't expect it to last. As Charles Spurgeon said, "We don't need to strike when the iron is hot. When God heats the iron, it will stay hot."
Scriptures teach the perseverance of the saints, and not the perseverance of the phony pretenders. Scriptures teach the perseverance of the sheep, and not the perseverance of the goats. Scriptures teach the perseverance of the wheat, and not the perseverance of the tares. Scriptures teach the perseverance of Jesus' friends, and not the perseverance of His enemies. Scriptures teach the perseverance of the children of light, and not the perseverance of the children of darkness.
Those who persevere in the faith are those whom God has preserved in His grace. And those who persevere in the faith are those who will "give all diligence to make their calling (irresistible grace) and election sure." (2 Peter 1:10) God's grace is not the excuse for laziness on our part; it is the best motivator and power behind all obedience. (Titus 2:11-14) Such was the theology behind John Newton's second verse to his most famous hymn.
Salvation from God is not hanging by a thread; it is forever secured by the One who was hanging on a tree on our behalf. His blood forgives us of all past sin, present sin and future sin. To say that our salvation is iffy from day to day is akin to saying that Jesus can forgive us of all past sin and present sin, but He is simply not up to it to forgiving us of all our future sin. Now that's a lasting depression!
"Now unto Him who is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Savior be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen." (Jude 24-25)
I can say that there have been many events and people in history that have made a deep impression on me, but they are nothing compared to the eternal impression that God has made on my soul. This is why I am confident that He, the author and finisher of my faith, who began a good work in me will complete it at the day of Jesus Christ.
Kept by God's grace,
Chris
