You have need of perseverance

“You have need of perseverance,” the author of the letter to the Hebrews urges his audience (10:36). But why?

This past weekend during the first week of class, we were talking about the truth that God saves sinners. (This teaching is put forth in what has somewhat unfortunately become called the Five Points of Calvinism.) When we were talking about the doctrine of the Preservation of the Elect (a.k.a. Perseverance of the Saints), Dr. Griffith asked us, “Why is perseverance in faith necessary? Why can’t we just be justified at some point upon making a ‘decision for Christ’ and then live as we please?”

The question stumped me somewhat. But then I realized this: The very nature of faith and salvation demands it. How so? Because God’s saving work—not only in what happens to us, but also the prize we receive—is fellowship (union; Greek koinonia) with Christ. “God . . . has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Cor. 1:9). Salvation is, by its very nature, a relationship. And we exercise this relationship by a life of obedient faith in the Messiah’s sufficiency as Savior and Mediator and his supremacy as Lord and King. “Believers are called into the fellowship of Christ and fellowship means communion," explains John Murray. "The life of faith is one of living union and communion with the exalted and ever-present Redeemer” [1]. As long as we have salvation, we must have a humble, repentant faith; the presence of God’s gracious in-Christ redemption can never be divorced from trust in him. So if we are to inherit eternal life, we must have an eternal faith.

But this is glorious news, comforting news, filling me with a “joy unspeakable and full of glory." Left on our own, the demand for persevering faith would be but “dismay and Christless dread” [2]. But we forget: it is the Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—with whom we have fellowship; it is to a Person we are united. Salvation does not exist as an abstraction or a philosophical construct; it is not a lofty idea or an mechanical process. It is a gracious covenantal bond between a Shepherd and the flock under his care, a Bridegroom and his bride, a Father and his son, a Lord and his servant. The word used throughout the Scriptures for this is chesed, a word so full of meaning that English translations fail to pin it down. Try as they might—“unfailing love” (NIV), “steadfast love” (ESV), “lovingkindness” (NASB), “loyal love” or “merciful love” (The Message)—they can but dance around it. Perhaps only the tongues of angels are fit for its expression.

So we’re not stuck to persevere on our own. We have the full backing and upholding and undying, self-binding love of the very heart of God himself. I cannot stress enough that salvation belongs a Person. His name is Everlasting Father, whose desires and commitments are never fickle and never revoked. His name is Almighty God and King of Kings, wielding omnipotent power and authority to crush all enemies and secure the future of his loved ones. His name is Compassionate Priest, who sympathizes with us, deals tenderly with us in our weaknesses, and who ever lives to make intercession for us (Rom. 8:34; Heb. 7:25). His name is Advocate, Counselor, and Pledge, an indwelling guarantee who keeps us secure and breathes into our hearts his very own life and glory.

"Our Lord Jesus Christ . . . will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Christ Jesus our Lord, is faithful." (1 Cor. 1:8-9)

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[1] John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1955) 169. Murray continues beautifully: “The life of faith is the life of love, and the life of love is the life of fellowship, or mystic communion with him who ever lives to make intercession for his people and who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. It is a fellowship with him who has an inexhaustible reservoir of sympathy with his people’s temptations, afflictions, and infirmities because he was tempted in all points like as they were, yet without sin. The life of faith cannot be that of cold metallic assent. It must have the passion and warmth of love and communion because communion with God is the crown and apex of true religion. ‘Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ’ (1 John 1:3)” (Ibid., 169-70). So much for calling Calvinists cold, dour, mechanical folk!

[2] Ibid., 165.

Triune intercession

It never fails. Whether I pray or read my Bible in the evening, I almost invariably fall asleep in fatigue. The same happens in the morning before I get leave for school. In these stressful, needy times--and when isn't it the "time of need" (Hebrews 4:15)?--I feel like I need to pray even more than usual. I need God to guide me, support me, strengthen me every day, all day. Yet I can scarcely do so in prayer. Whenever I quiet down that much, I just fall asleep or I can't focus.

But in his goodness the Holy Spirit recently brought to my mind a vital and wondrous truth: the fullness of the triune Godhead is praying for me. In Romans 8 it says that in my times of weakness, exasperation, even coma, "the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words" (v. 26). How can the Spirit's prayers for those whom he breathes life ever fail? "And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God [the Father]" (v. 27). Not only does the Spirit himself pray to the Father, but the Father has gladly revealed his will to the Spirit, giving him what to pray for each of his adopted children!

What is more, the Anointed Son himself, approved and vindicated by God in his everlasting reign at the Father's right hand, also prays for us without end. "Christ Jesus is the one who died--more than that, who was raised--who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" (vv.34-35a).

In a miracle of mercy, the whole Trinity is involved in unceasing prayer for me, upholding me. There is no worry, confusion, or disagreement among the three Persons. The Father has revealed his will, which is prayed by the Spirit and which was and is accomplished in the Son, who ever lives as our Advocate (parakletos, 1 John 2:1-2; used in John 14, 16 of the Spirit). I need not worry that I fall asleep in prayer; God himself prays for me!

You have been my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.
My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me.
(Psalm 63:7-8)

Lessons from Turkey, part I

Prior to ever heading overseas, a large part of my motivation was not only to help spread the Good News of Jesus Christ, but also to see God in new ways and come out of my time a more mature man. When I ask myself, What am I learning from being here? How am I growing? it’s often a depressing exercise in futility. I usually have no ready answers, and I’ve only become aware of even more sin in my life. I don’t pray much, I crave everyone’s approval, I was lazy and easily frustrated about studying and using Turkish, I came up with excuses not to spend time with students, I sought independence more than supportive fellowship with my teammates . . . the list could go on.

But yet I do find that I have been learning and growing. Friends have pointed out my humble teachability and desire for change, my skills in teaching the truth of God’s Word, and that I do in fact care about reaching Turks with the truth. And while I have no idea what lessons I’ll continue to learn now that I've returned to America, some lessons have stuck out to me as more consistent ones from my life in the intercontinental metropolis of Istanbul, Turkey.

The Trinity is essential to the gospel.

Five times each day in the Muslim world the ezan is sung, calling the devout to offer their ritual prayers (namaz) to Allah. Included in the ezan is the essential “pillar” of Muslim theology: that God/Allah is one, and one alone (similar to the Judeo-Christian shema in Deuteronomy 6:4). To ascribe to others the divinity relegated to Allah is an unforgiveable sin.

At first I found the concept of the Trinity (üçlü birlik) to be one of the most common questions or objections to the Christian faith. We Christians are clearly lying polytheists, claiming that Jesus was not only the “Son of God"[1]—a blasphemy in itself, for God does not have sexual relations with humans—but even the Supreme Deity himself. Because there’s no truly satisfactory way to explain the tri-unity of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit (especially in the eyes of a questioning Muslim), I started thinking more about what the Trinity teaches about the One God himself. [2]

Far from being the more distant, borderline deistic being that Allah is, the Trinity shows that God is emphatically personal, whose essential nature is one of relationship. “Trinity is not an attempt to explain or define God by means of abstractions . . . but a witness that God reveals himself as personal and in personal relations,” writes Eugene H. Peterson. “Under the image of the Trinity we discover that we do not know God by defining him but by being loved by him and loving in return." [3]

Because God has forever been in relationship with himself, this allows God to have always been loving without being dependent on the works of his hands. The Father has always and forever had his beloved Son, cementing love and joy at the very core of his being. For Allah to have someone to love, he needed to create humankind, and is therefore in some manner restrained and dependent upon us for his character. Thus love is not part of his truest nature, unlike that of our great and unchanging Yahweh.

On top of all that, the sheer mind-boggling physics of the Trinity itself, completely inexplicable by even man’s most strenuous intellectual gymnastics, upholds to me the validity of the Holy Scriptures themselves; their message is confirmed as “breathed out by God” (2 Timothy 3:16) and truly trustworthy. God is Someone far greater than my mind can ever conceive, making him worthy of worship, obedience, wonder, and fear-of-the-Lord.

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[1] I suppose we are half to blame for perpetuating the misunderstanding, given that we continue the notion that “Son of God” refers chiefly to Jesus’ virgin birth. Yes, that’s partly true. But in Jewish understanding, “Son of God” was a common designation for the Messiah, the man who was to be Yahweh’s anointed king in the line of David through whom he would justly reign to fulfill his promises to Abraham and redeem Israel from her enemies (see, e.g., 2 Samuel 7:11-16; Psalms 2:6-7, 12; 72:1; Romans 1:3-4). Jesus as “Son of God” also shows that he is so closely united with God the Father that his actions and sayings are one and the same (Luke 10:21-22; John 5:17-22). This is particularly seen in John’s Gospel, where Jesus is portrayed as God living and acting in the flesh (John 20:31)—something far different from the mere human Messiah the Jews expected.

[2] Is it of note that I lived in the district of Kadıköy (on the Asian side of modern-day İstanbul)? It was once known as Khalkedon (or Chalcedon, Latin), where an important church council took place in A.D. 451, cementing the doctrine of the Trinity. I also had the opportunity to travel to the neaby town of İznik—historical Nikaea (Nicea)—where the Coptic “black dwarf” Athanasius fought so valiantly to oppose the Arians and uphold that Jesus Christ is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father” (Nicene Creed).

[3] Eugene H. Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005), p. 7.