Who's ready for some good news?

Let's find a place in our Bibles called 2 Peter 1:5. I want to show you a secret about inner wholeness and health. As I read all this, I want you to imagine how it would be to have all these qualities naturally inside you.

Imagine what this would do for your marriage or your dating. Relationships. Friendships. Career. Mental health.

"But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love" (2 Peter 1:5-7).

There are 7 character traits here. This is the kind of character and life that any healthy person would want. This is self acceptance. This is inner peace. This is genuine friendship. And this is that beautiful thing called love.

Having these virtues... that's a good, good life.

But how do we get these things? Is it by self effort? Is it by trying hard to get all these things? Should I preach a series on each one of these and say this is how to get virtue... do this, do this, do that. Can you add all these qualities because you get a good half-time pep talk?

Let's go on.

"For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things..." (2 Peter 1:8,9).

Now, what is God's diagnosis of someone who lacks these godly traits? Why would a believer in Jesus not have these things? You're about to read..."For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins."

 

Do you know why you don't see these godly traits? Because you have forgotten that you are forgiven!

If you lack these things, it doesn't mean you lost your salvation. It means you've forgotten the power of your forgiveness.

When you live a life that is conscious of God's forgiveness, it means there is grace and truth so deeply programmed into your soul that all these other virtues will be there too.

I can't get you to practice these 7 character traits by telling you to practice these character traits.

But I can get you to practice them by grounding you again and again in God's total forgiveness of all your sins, all the time and forever.

What does this mean?

It means when you sin, you can't let the devil stick in a guilt trip edgewise.

No. When you sin, when you fail, you have to dust yourself off and say right away, I thank you God for your total forgiveness through my Crucified Savior, and I remind myself I am still righteous in your eyes, so I remain richly blessed, highly favored, and deeply loved.

He who lacks these things has forgotten that he was cleansed. So I'm here to remind you... Christian... you are cleansed!

Good news, right?

I want to start with a definition, and then I want to prove it to you. That's my job. My job is to prove what I say from the Bible. Don't believe something just because I say it, or any pastor says, or the Internet says it.

God gave you a mind and a Bible... use them and make up your own mind.

So here's the definition of Eternal Security.

There you go.

I have been preaching eternal security all my life. And one thing I've learned is there are a lot of Christians who push back against this, and say it isn't Biblical. So what I want to say is, have you actually read your Bible?

So, today I want to convene a courtroom. You be the jury. I'll be the lawyer for the defense. My job is to build the case for eternal security. Your job is to render the verdict.

So I'm going to build my case on three platforms:

So, Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, first, you should know that we have a spiritual growth track here at Pathway. It covers all the basics of what we believe as Christians.

We call that track the Grace Pathway. You see signs and icons referring to the Grace Pathway all the time. We teach the Grace Pathway by going through 10 books, most of them are pretty short.

Book one is called Welcome to God's Family. We give this one as a gift to everyone who gets saved here.

Book two is called Secure Forever. Our goal is that every person in our church reads this book and goes through a class on eternal security.

Yes, it's that important.

 

This little book makes the affirmative case for eternal security. Let me do a little of that here.

Once Saved, Always Saved...

Jesus, when he died on the Cross, didn't forget a single sin. The specific day when you would actually commit those sins makes no difference. Whether you commit them before you are saved or after doesn't matter. He paid for all your sins, past, present, and future. They were all future tense when he died on the cross, and he didn't miss even one of them. He paid in full. You've been cleansed from all your sins.

Think about what this means: God would damage his own honor if he were to punish you for a sin Christ already died for. How can that which has been washed away in the flood of Calvary Love ever spoil your salvation?

The Bible says that Jesus, after he had offered the one and only all-sufficient sacrifice to pay for all your sins, "sat down at the right hand of God" (Hebrews 10:12). Why? Because payment for your sins was utterly complete, meaning there is no conceivable circumstance under which you will ever pay for even one of them before God.

"But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God" (Hebrews 10:12).

"Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1, NAS95).

"The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, 'Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!'" (John 1:19)