The title of my article may sound a little strange but it’s just another way of putting what the Baptist of old called “The Perseverance of the Saints,” and what Christ called “enduring to the end” in Matthew 24.. The “New Baptist” of our day has concocted something entirely different, they speak in terms of “once saved, always saved.” I have no problem with the eternal security of the saints, but I do have a problem with the “once saved, always saved” idea in that there appears to me to be a misconception of what “saved” means. Salvation is not a profession of faith and a name on a Baptist Church Membership List. Over my fifty plus years of preaching and pastoring I have talked to a great number of poor souls who are living with a foggy idea that a profession of faith, baptism, and church membership some ten, fifteen and twenty years ago is salvation. It doesn’t seem to disturb them that soon after that point of time they have lived like the devil himself, with very little, if any change in life. These same people may go years and never darken the door of the church, may never read their Bibles, or never pray, with the exception of some crisis in their life. One of the most vital doctrines that Jesus of Nazareth ever preached was the doctrine of spiritual union and communion with Him. In John 6 having set forth this union with Him brought about by the sovereign will and power of His father vs. 44-45, He says in vs. 53-54, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life: and I will raise him up at the last day.” The thought of “eating and drinking” the flesh and blood of Christ is in the present and continuing mode. Just as necessary for our physical subsistence is our daily food, so is our spiritual as we commune with Him through the Word of Christ, the Bible. Christ was not talking about cannibalism; He is speaking of daily communion with Him through the Holy Scriptures, which set forth that doctrine of His person and work. He concludes that those alone who persevere have “life with Him.” I appeal to the Old Baptist Confession of 1742, known as the Philadelphia Confession of Faith titled Of the Perseverance of the Saints. “Those whom God hath accepted in the Beloved, effectually called and sanctified by the Spirit, and given the precious faith of His elect unto, can neither totally nor finally fall from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved, seeing the gifts and callings of God are without repentance. This perseverance of the saints depends not upon their own free will but upon the immutability of the decree of election, flowing from the free and unchangeable love of God the Father, upon the efficacy of the merit and intercession of Jesus Christ and union with Him.” Christian Fellowship is also a means of perseverance; the cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a fellowship/participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a fellowship/participation in the body of Christ (I Cor.10:16): in other words, when we drink the cup and eat the bread we share in the benefits of the slain body and shed blood of Jesus. We have a share in what death achieved. Fellowship is a mutual bond that Christians have with Christ that puts us in a deep, eternal relationship with one another; a relationship deeper than with family (Heb.3:12-14).
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