PRESERVATION OF THE SAINTS

PRESERVATION OF THE SAINTS The blood of Christ is sufficient both to procure and secure salvation of all for whom it was shed. Therefore, all of the elect will finally be saved.

John 1:1-3; "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life and the life was the light of men." The word procure means (among other things) to attain or to set in order. I can think of no better place to begin to consider the sufficiency of Christ to set in order our salvation than the opening verses of His Gospel as recorded by John. Where, you may ask, is the blood in consideration of these verses. ConsiderGenesis 9:4when God told Noah "But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat." I understand that in this particular instance God was giving a command concerning how they were to eat; nonetheless, there is great power in the statement that the life is in the blood (which I hope to come back to shortly). So in the beginning we see the Word (which was made flesh and dwelt among men, or, in other words, Jesus Christ) with God and BEING God and all things were made by Him. In this "all things" I believe that it embraces things terrestrial and things celestial, things temporal and things eternal. One of these eternal things was the divine PURPOSE to bring about the salvation of all His children. Our Lord, being God, and then being made flesh and dwelling among us made Him uniquely suited to procure our salvation. Because there was life in Him that was (and is) the light of men, and the life being in the blood (as it applies and is applied to us) there was no one else who could possibly set in order (procure) salvation for those that are sanctified by His blood. God himself declared in Isaiah that he "looked, and there was none to help" so he brought salvation with His "own arm", again having reference to Christ. Having then procured our eternal salvation He also secured that salvation by the shedding of His blood.

Blood was shed often in sacrifice under the law that God gave to Moses but it could never make the comers thereunto perfect (Hebrews 10:1). Since the blood that was available under the law sacrifice could not appease God it did not put away sin. As a matter of fact it did just the opposite; it brought into remembrance their sin year after year and they had to continually make offerings and sacrifices for a brief atonement. Then, in the fullness of time, a Lamb came of which John the Baptist bore record saying "Behold, the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." This Lamb (Jesus, the Christ) declared that he did not come to do His own will, but the will of the Father who had sent Him (John 6:38) and He further declared that "this is the Father’s will, that of all which He hath given me I should lose nothing, but raise it up again the last day." (John 6:39) The scriptures tell us that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin; without the remission of sin we could not stand in God’s eternal presence because He cannot look upon sin. In the blood of this Lamb was found the thing that the law could never do......literally take away our sin. Not just cleanse us for a year, but forever make us spotless! In the blood of this Lamb was power sufficient to cause God to declare that He does not remember our sin or our iniquity but has cast it "into a sea of forgetfulness, NEVER to be remembered against us again."Whereas He told Noah not to eat the flesh with the life thereof (the blood) our spotless Lamb instructed us to eat of His flesh and drink of His blood. The statement that God made to Noah is still true....the life is in the blood. Our life is hid with Christ in God, because His blood has covered our sin and clothed us with His righteousness. It is manifest that the Father was pleased with all that His son Jesus did in the fact that there is an empty tomb where He lay for a brief time. God, raising up Jesus from the dead, did in essence raise us up with Him because we have been made accepted in the beloved. The blood of Jesus could not fail to procure and secure our eternal salvation because He is God and by His very nature can not fail. Rejoice that He has declared that He has done whatsoever He has pleased. Rejoice that it has pleased Him to love us with an everlasting love. Rejoice that God who can not lie has left us the witness of His Holy Spirit that He sees us only through the shed blood of Christ, the last and final offering that God ever required for sin. Rejoice that the Lamb has declared "because I live, ye shall live also."

Elder Mike McGrady