God’s people, after they are called by grace, are preserved in Christ Jesus—they are “kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.” They are not allowed to sin away their eternal inheritance, but as temptations arise, they have strength given with which to encounter them—and as sin blackens them they are washed afresh and again cleansed. But mark, the reason why God keeps His people is the same as that which made them His people—His own free sovereign grace! If, my brothers and sisters, you have been delivered in the hour of temptation, pause and remember that you were not delivered for your own sake—there was nothing in you that deserved the deliverance! If you have been fed and supplied in your hour of need, it is not because you have been a faithful servant of God, nor because you have been a prayerful Christian. It is simply and only because of God’s mercy! He is not moved to anything He does for you by anything that you do for Him—His motive for blessing you lies wholly and entirely in the depths of His own bosom! Blessed be God, His people shall be kept—
“Nor death, nor hell shall ever remove
His favorites from His breast!
In the dear bosom of His love
They must forever rest.”
But why? Because they are holy; because they are sanctified; because they serve God with good works? No, but because He, in His sovereign grace, has loved them, does love them, and will love them even to the end! And to conclude my exposition of this text. This shall hold good in heaven itself! The day is coming when every blood-bought, blood-washed child of God shall walk the golden streets arrayed in white. Our hands shall soon bear the palm. Our ears shall be delighted with celestial melodies and our eyes filled with the transporting visions of God’s glory. But mark, the only reason why God shall bring us to heaven shall be His own love and not because we deserved it—we must fight the fight, but we do not win the victory because we fight it! We must labor, but the wage at the days’ end shall be a wage of grace and not a debt! We must honor God here, looking for the recompense of the reward, but that recompense will not be given on a legal ground because we merited it, but given to us entirely because God loves us—not for any reason that was in us! When you and I and each of us shall enter heaven, our song shall be, “Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Your name be all the glory.” And that shall be true! It shall not be a mere exaggeration of gratitude. It shall be true! We shall be compelled to sing it because we could not sing anything else. We shall feel that we did nothing and that we were nothing, but that God did it all—that we had nothing in us to be the motive of His doing it—but that His motive lay in Himself! Therefore, unto Him shall be every particle of the honor forever and ever.
Free Grace, Sermon 233 - Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Photo credit: http://www.ForestWander.com [CC BY-SA 3.0 us (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons
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