The Ultimate Security of Our Salvation
Romans 8:29-30
Let's open our Bibles tonight to Romans Chapter 8. This most thrilling wonderful chapter on the security provided us in the Spirit. And as we're looking now at verses 28 through 30 we're talking about the ultimate security. And this is our third message in these verses. I'd like to read verse 28, 29, and 30, so you'll have it in mind as we look together at God's word.
"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first born among many brethren, moreover whom He did predestinate them He also called, and whom He called them He also justified and whom He justified them He also glorified."
People have for many, many years wondered and debated about the issue of whether or not a Christian may lose his or her salvation. It has been such an issue that really the whole of the Christian church has been split over that issue. There's a whole group of people within Christendom who believe you may loose your salvation. There is another group that believe you may not. And perhaps more than any other single doctrine this has been a dividing issue in the church.
Now this is really very sad because I don't think the Bible is unclear on this at all. Certainly not unclear so that an entire segment of Christianity would deny what I believe is a very clear and straightforward presentation of the doctrine of security in Romans Chapter 8. I believe that you find the security of the believer, that is when you come to know Jesus Christ it is indeed eternal in many places. But perhaps no one place is as dramatically pointed and clear as is this text. In fact, these three verses constitute the most powerful, the most clear of all scriptural statements in regard to our security. They guarantee to us without variation and without exception the final glory of all those redeemed by Jesus Christ. For once we have become believers all things then work together for our good, so nothing can work for our ultimate evil. And those who are justified, without exception, will also be glorified.
Now in many ways the key phrase in this trilogy of verses is at the end of verse 28, and I want us to just springboard off of that phrase called according to His purpose. The, His is implied in the Greek text and rightly so. It is the purpose of God. According to His purpose. You see we are forever secure because God purposed it so. God planned it so. God designed it so. And we've been learning how both the Son of God and the Spirit of God intercede for us that the plan of God and the purpose of God may in fact come to pass. So our security is guaranteed not only by the purpose of God but by the outworking of that purpose through the intercessory ministry of the Son and the Spirit.
Now if you just look at the phrase at the end of verse 28, according to His purpose, you get really the key to the next two verses. For in the next two verses His purpose is explained, His purpose is explained. Here is God's eternal purpose: "For whom He did foreknow He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren, moreover whom He did predestinate, them He also called, whom He called them He also justified, and whom He justified them He also glorified." That was His purpose.
We're going to look then, in our study tonight, into the mind of God, into His purpose for salvation. Now let me just give you some ground rules as we go, all right? We're going to be over our heads, folks. You have to know that at the outset. It's going to be impossible for us to totally get our arms around these concepts. And so we affirm the fact that we believe the Bible to be the word of God and we accept what we can't ultimately fully understand, that we accept it by, what, faith. Somewhere along the line you're going to have to jettison your reason. You're going to have to say bye. bye to your logic and your human wisdom, because we're going to be plunging into unfathomable truths, and as we try to grasp them in our puny little heads, as we try to understand the mind and the purpose of an infinite God, who is bigger than the entire universe. We are embarking on a journey that ultimately leads us to divine infinity, which is to us incomprehensible.
We have great limitations, great limitations, and the temptation is going to be, and you watch it happen, the temptation is going to be when you come to a part of the divine purpose of God that you don't understand instead of recognizing your limitation, you're going to want to assume that God has a limitation. In other words, that God has done something inconsistent and when you don't understand it you're going to think it's God's limitation not yours, because you see we believe that we are really ultimate in understanding all things. But if you find yourself thinking ill of God, or if you find yourself questioning God, or if you find yourself wondering if God hasn't made a terrible mistake or whether God isn't, in fact, unjust then know this, will you, you have played the fool, because you are now saying that I and my mind are ultimate and if you don't fit into it God there must be something wrong with you. That is the ultimate sacrilege, the ultimate sacrilege.
So please resist the temptation to question the wisdom of God, to question the love of God, to question the justice of God, to question the integrity of God, the holiness of God because your mind or my mind is feeble, is absolutely ridiculous. And another thought, too, try not to make any conclusions until I'm finished because somewhere along the line you may feel that things are out of balance and I will try to give you the balance that the word of God gives to things that are ultimately utterly incomprehensible. And another thing, please don't stoop to the absurd, as we've all done, by saying well I think it's sort of like this. Or my concept of this whole thing is thus and so, but rather come humbly to the sacred infinite mind of God, take what you can take and what you can't quite stretch your mind to reach except by faith, and don't impugn the character of God. Human reason, human logic, human understanding are not adequate to the task, we cannot ultimately reconcile this kind of truth with our own understanding. We can't, we can't.
So if you know that going in it's helpful. You say, "Why are we even discussing it?" Because it's here in the Bible and God intended for us to do that. As far as we can go we're going to go. Now the general truth in these verses is very clear. God causes all things to work together for our good. That's very clear, all things, all things, all things, why, because that is according to His, what, purpose. He designed it that way. I mean there's no other answer. There's no other way to explain why He does this other than that's exactly what He wanted to do and He is totally free in His decision making to do whatever He wants and this is what He wants. He wants it so that when we come to Christ and are redeemed from then on all things work together ultimately for our good and glory, as we saw last time. Nothing can change that, nothing. That's His purpose. And by the way we were saved in accord with His purpose.
In fact, if I could put it simply, I'd say this: You're not a Christian because of something you decided. You're a Christian because of something God decided. To be honest with you, folks, it really wasn't your decision. It was His. It was His. Look back with me for a moment further in your Bible to Ephesians Chapter 1, and hear the words of the apostle Paul. Verse 3 of Chapter 1, that great benediction; "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.
Now here is a benediction, a statement of praise to God and he blesses the name of God who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings. In other words, the praise belongs to God. It wasn't what we decided; it was what God decided. So the praise is His. Why do we praise Him, why do we bless Him, because verse 4 says, "He has chosen us in Him." It was His decision. It was His choice. He has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, His purpose, His plan, that we should be holy and without blame. In other words, ultimately we're going to be holy and without any blame, all sin is overruled is another way of saying all things work together for our ultimate good because sin is always being overruled. You say, "Why so?" Verse 5, because He has predestinated us under the adoption of sons. It was again His predetermined choice to make us sons. Watch this one, end of verse 5, according to the good pleasure of, what, His will." His will. You see it's God who purposed our salvation to glory; therefore, it's God who carries that out, and so we are saved by the purpose and plan of God; we are kept unto glory by the same purpose and the same plan. Our security then is wrapped not in our ability to stay saved, but in God's ability to keep His own word to Himself.
It's reminiscent of Genesis when God came and it was a great covenant made with Abraham only Abraham didn't have anything to do with it. Animals were killed and cut in half and laid on the ground and a dead bird over here and a dead bird over here and men in those days would make a covenant that way, splitting animals and laying them on two sides and the men making the covenant would walk between the split animals. It was a way, a symbol of a covenant being made. And God was going to make a covenant with Abraham. It's a wonderful thing. You know what he did? He just knocked out Abraham with a divine anesthetic. He went to sleep and God went through by himself because God was not making a covenant conditioned upon Abraham. He was making a covenant with himself to bind himself to bless, as He promised He would.
And the covenant of salvation, in a sense, is just so. It is a covenant that God makes with Himself, which He will fulfill and by the divine purpose He has ordained before the foundation of the world who it is that is to become a son by Jesus Christ according to His will. And that is why it is, "To the praise of the glory of His grace," verse 6, because He did it, He did it.
Verse 9, "He has made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure," and here it comes, "Which He has purposed in Himself." God covenants with Himself, and so both parties, that is God and God, being absolutely perfect and without flaw and without error and without the ability to violate their word within the Trinity, the covenant is kept. It's a tremendous thing.
Verse 11, "In whom also we have been made an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worships all things after the counsel of His own will." The word work there is energeo energizes all things according to His own will, His own purpose, it's His plan, it's His purpose, it's His glory. And that's the way it is all the way through. God has purposed to redeem us.
So salvation, again I say, is based not on what you decide but on what God decides. In John 1, do you remember verse 12 and 12? Just as a starting point now, "But as many as received Him to them gave He the authority to become the children of God." "As many as received Him," sure we have a part in responding, "to them that believe on His name." We receive Him, we believe on His name, but the next verse says, "Who were born," this is regeneration, "Not of blood," that's not a physical birth, "Nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man," but of whom," of God." So we are redeemed by the will of God. And, again I say, it's not what we decide it's what God has already decided. We come in behind the decision God has already made and we respond. So much of contemporary modern evangelism leaves people the idea that salvation is predicated on their decision for Christ when truly salvation is really predicated on God's decision for them. That's the emphasis of Scripture. You see how could man ever make a decision for God? The natural man understandeth not the things of God. To him they are absolute, what, foolishness. The preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness. The God of this world has blinded their minds lest they should believe. They are dark, they are ignorant, they are dead in trespasses and sin, there's not way possible that they could ever muster enough of whatever it takes to turn around and decide for God. Man can't make the move to Christ. Man can't do that until God makes the first move in line with His eternal purpose.
Now this is important, beloved, because what it says is that if God decides for us in eternity past, then He has decided that He would redeem us unto eternity future and there can be no loss in between understood? because it is His decision that we would be sons unto glory. So, the ultimate security is found in the purpose of God, the purpose of God.
I want you to look at verse 29 now. This is so wonderful. Now here we find the purpose of salvation. Let me give you two thoughts if we have time tonight: the purpose of salvation, the progress of salvation. The purpose: It says in verse 29 mid way through, "To be conformed to the image of His Son, that He," that is the Son, capital H, "that He might be the firstborn among many brother." Now that's the purpose of salvation. The purpose of salvation is that we would be conformed to the image of God's Son, that He, that is the Son, might be the protatakus, and I'll explain that Greek word in a moment, among many brethren.
Now here we have a secondary and a primary phrase in this purpose. Let's look at the secondary one. It says that we have been called according to His purpose and His purpose is to conform us to the image of His Son. Now listen to me. You were saved, time past, to be made like whom? Christ. And all of life is just a moving toward that, that ultimate reality of being like Him. You see God's plan was to save men to make them like Christ and if men could be saved and become lost and never become like Christ then they couldn't be saved because they were saved to be like Christ. That is God's covenant with Himself. That is His eternal purpose. Forgiveness of sin, the removal of guilt, the gifts of love and peace and joy and wisdom all of those things are only a part of the reality of salvation. Even heaven is only a part. The real goal is that we be conformed to the image of His Son. In other words, watch this one, God is redeeming an eternally holy Christ-like glorified race of humanity.
That's why we were redeemed and when you believed that process of being conformed to Christ began and it must be fulfilled. That is God's holy purpose. That's why we read back in verse 24, "We are saved in hope." "We are saved in hope." That's why we read in verse 17, "That we are children, and if we are children then we are heirs." If you are ever a child of God, then you are an heir of God, and if you are an heir of God, you are a joint heir with Christ since we suffer with Him that we may be also, what, glorified together with Him. The same idea. We were made sons that we might be heirs and our inheritance is to be like Christ and to inherit all that belongs to Him. It's tremendous; it's absolutely tremendous.
So, you see if you come up with a doctrine that allows for people to loose their salvation you've just invented an unbiblical salvation because salvation is to make us conform to the image of Christ. By the way the verb to be conformed means to bring to the same form with, to bring to the same form with, and that's exactly what it says. We're going to be brought into the same form with Christ. This is just a marvelous thing. You say, "What do you think He means by that?" Well Philippians 3:21 says that the Lord is going to change our lowly body that it may be fashioned like His glorious body. So one thing it means is His glorified body becomes the standard and our glorified body is going to be like His, so it is a bodily promise, isn't it? In other words to be conformed then to the image or to be made into the same form with Christ has to do with our body, whatever that glorified body is like, that post resurrection body of our Lord.
So outwardly we're going to be conformed to that same kind of body. I don't think we're all going to look alike, but as human beings, although we're all different, we're conformed to the same body, aren't we? We have basically the same body. It works in the same way, in the same environment and so forth, and by the same principles. And so when we go to glory we're going to receive a glorious body that works in the same environment and according to the same principles, as does the resurrected glorified body of the Lord Jesus Christ. But I think it's even more than that. I think we're not only going to be like Him in whatever that glorified body is, but I think we're going to be like Him in the spiritual dimension as well. We will be outwardly perfect and we will be inwardly perfect.
And so residing in us will be the very holiness of Jesus Christ, the divine incorruptible given to us at redemption. We'll be freed from the encumbrance of the humanness, which we now possess, and we'll liberated, as it says in this chapter, unto the glorious liberation of the children of God. We will be delivered from the bondage of corruption, back in verse 21, and so we will have an outward appearance like that of Jesus Christ, and an inward holiness like that of Jesus Christ.
I mean I've heard of wanting to be like your hero, but that's just incomprehensible, but that's what it says. The word is image, interesting word, conformed to the image icon, you might have heard of an icon, which is a statue made to look like someone. This is not an incidental image. This is not an accidental image. This is a calculated image. It is a replicated image. It is a derived likeness. It is used of a son who is the image of his father. How about Hebrews 1, where it says that God has spoken by His Son who is the expressed image of His person. And so we are not going to be accidentally in the image of Christ; we are going to be directly replicated in His image. It's just a marvelous thing to think about. And it's what John had in mind when he said, "Well see Him and be like Him, for we see Him as He is."
In II Corinthians the verse that I love and I write it a lot of times when I sign my name, in II Corinthians 3:18, it says, "We all with an unveiled face," the veil is taken off in salvation the veil is removed, "we see clearly in a glass the glory of the Lord." I love this. Once you come to Christ the veil is off. You're no longer blind. You can see. And then you begin to look at the glory of the Lord, now follow this, and "You are being changed into the same image," from one level of glory to the next level of glory, to the next level of glory, "Even as by the Spirit of the Lord." What a statement. When you become a believer and your salvation is initiated in time and space the process of taking you from one level of glory to the next level of glory to the next until little by little and step at a time you move more toward Christ likeness till the day you see Him and become like Him. That's what God is doing in salvation. He's forming us into the image of His own Son.
Listen to I Corinthians 15:49, "As we have born the image of the earthly, or the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly," a marvelous statement, I Corinthians 15:49. We are like the earthy. We will be like the heavenly. That's His purpose to make us like His Son.
Well look for just a moment at Hebrews 2:10, and this might give you another little insight. It says that Jesus suffered death and so forth in verse 9, then in verse 10 it says, and the reason, "It was fitting for Him for whom are all things, and by whom are all things," in other words everything was made for Him and by Him, "in bringing many sons unto," what, "glory." You see He was made it says there, "The captain of our salvation to bring us to glory," to bring us to glory. So that the process of going from one level of glory to the next level of glory to the next level of glory by the ministry of the Spirit of God could begin. And I love what it says further down, it says that, "He's not ashamed to call us brothers," verse 11.
So beloved we've been redeemed to be made like Christ. That's the first phrase in the purpose. Now go back to Romans 8 again. That's, however, only secondary. Let me show you the primary purpose, so wonderful. "In order that," and here's the purpose of the secondary, in order that He, and make a capital H there, that He, that is the Son, might be the protatakus among many brethren. What does that mean? Protatakus means the firstborn, but in the sense if preeminence, not in the sense of chronology. In the Jewish culture obviously the firstborn was the one who inherited everything. The firstborn was the one that was elevated. The firstborn was the one that uniquely represented the dignity of the family and carried the name. He was the supreme one, the preeminent one, and that's exactly what it's saying here. The reason we've all been saved is to make us like Christ, and the reason God wants to make us like Christ is so that there will be a whole redeemed and glorified humanity over which He will be the supreme one. That's what it is saying. That is the purpose.
So your salvation doesn't end with you. Your salvation could be explained another way in Chapter 2 of Philippians 9, God is highly exalted Him and given Him a name, which is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow." You see what God wants to do is to bring into glory, to bring into heaven, to bring into eternity a redeemed humanity who will spend all of that eternity giving glory to the one who stand above and beyond them all, the protatakus, the preeminent Christ. That's the purpose, marvelous, wonderful purpose.
Colossians 1:18, And He's the head of the body, the church. Who is the beginning, he protatakus from the dead that in all things He might have the preeminence. You go all the way back to God's creation. What did God create us in the first place? It's a tough question. He created us for His glory. He created us so that there would be a group of people who would give Him the glory due His name. And there was a rebellion, a wholesale rebellion begun in the Garden of Eden and God set out to redeem back humanity. And by His marvelous sovereign wisdom He called for a salvation that could bring those who rebelled against Him back to a place of giving Him glory, who could bring them all the way to glory and create an eternally redeemed community who would be like Jesus Christ and yet over whom Jesus Christ would stand as the preeminent one and; therefore, be glorified and adored, and worshipped, and revered and praised and blessed forever and ever and ever and ever. Now you understand why you're saved? It isn't just to keep you out of hell. That's a nice by-product. It isn't just to make you happy here and now. You've been redeemed to be made like Christ so that you can be a part of a redeemed eternal community who will give to the preeminent one glory due His name.
The glory of the Son then is the end of salvation and the ultimate objective of bringing us to His image is that we may be able to give Him the glory who is most glorious, who is most glorious. Just the idea that He is the protatakus among many brethren is beautiful. He didn't have to make us His brethren. He could have made us His servants. He didn't have to bring us all the way into the family, but He did. And so while we see God who has the perfect right to seek glory creating a redeemed humanity who can spend forever and ever glorifying and glorifying and glorifying the One who is worthy of it, we see not only God's desire for glory, but God's desire for intimacy because when He brought that redeemed humanity into the plan He not only brought them there to give glory but He brought them there to be one in essence with Himself. So we are brothers, we are brothers, marvelous thought. God gives us joy, He gives us peace, He gives us heaven, all of that is an element of His grace to sinners, but that's not our happiness or even our holiness, which is the apex of salvation. It's not for us that we've been saved; it's for Him. So Christ is the central point of redemptive history, not you. So if God saved you He'll bring you to glory because that's why He saved you and God's purposes don't get thwarted else He's not God. What a thought!
So the purpose of salvation is to bring us to the image of Christ so we can exalt the One who is over us and above us forever and ever and ever an