Secured for Eternity

“Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.” (Jude 1:24-25)

The greatest assurance that every believer holds on to is the truth that salvation is eternally secured by God. This doctrine of eternal security is so important because it glues together and seals forever every Christian doctrine that we stand on. After all, it would not make any sense if we were elected, justified, regenerated, and sanctified, if it would only result to the possibility of losing our salvation. God is too faithful to His covenant, too wise in His redemptive plan, and too powerful in making His will come to pass, that He would ever fail to keep those whom He has set His steadfast love on.

Just the slightest chance that we could fall out of the faith would easily make us think that salvation is pointless. No sensible person would commit and surrender his life to an end that is not guaranteed. More so, in our sinfulness and in our flesh, we know how quickly we could lose our salvation if it were just up to us. Without God’s preserving grace, we would easily stumble, linger in the darkness of our sin, and end up going farther astray from God.

God is able to keep you from falling. Would you notice how Jude describes God as the keeper of salvation? It is not just that God is willing to keep us, but that God is able to keep us! That is, He possesses everything necessary to keep you. He is not lacking in anything such that He would fail in His promise and plan of preserving you. It’s absolutely impossible for God not to finish the saving work He had started in you.

God is able to make you stand in His presence of glory blameless and with great joy. Jude’s choice of words is very interesting. He uses two opposite words - falling and standing - to emphasize and reinforce God’s preserving work. He is not just able to keep you from falling, but He is also able to make you stand in the presence of His glory. For us to understand the greatness of this promise, we need to understand what standing in the presence of God’s glory means. Standing in the presence of God’s glory requires blamelessness. Because God is a holy God, not a single hint of sin can stand in his presence. That being said, any sinner would tremble before God’s holy and glorious presence knowing that he cannot stand there. But herein lies the greatness of this promise: that we will stand in the presence of God’s glory blameless and with great joy. We will not stand condemned of our sins, but blameless in His sight. We will not stand in overwhelming fear, but stand with great joy. This is because Christ’s work of redemption has been applied to us through faith. Christ took upon Himself all our sins and suffered in our place for these very sins. That’s not all. Christ also imputed to us His own righteousness that we may experience newness of life and fullness of reward in His presence for all eternity. Christ is why we will stand blameless and with great joy before God’s presence. Oh what a promise! God will not stop keeping us until we finally stand in His presence blameless and with great joy. In granting us salvation, God did not intend to bring you only halfway through the journey. No, He will take you to end of the journey where you will see Him face to face.

Dear believer, we can never lose our salvation since it was never in our keeping in the first place. Salvation completely belongs to God. And because it belongs to God, nothing and no one could ever snatch it away from Him. God’s hands are most powerful and His grip is most firm - that is why our salvation is in the safest place there is.