Hold Fast # 6

Hold Fast # 6

Six thousand years ago, sin entered into the world by the devil's daring falsehood - "You shall not surely die!" (Gen. 3:4). At the end of six thousand years, the great enemy of mankind is still using his old weapon, and trying to persuade men that they may live and die in sin, and yet at some distant period may be finally saved. Let us not be ignorant of his devices. Let us walk steadily in the old paths. Let us hold fast the old truth, and believing that, as the happiness of the saved is eternal, so also is the misery of the lost.

(i) Let us hold it fast in the interest of the whole system of revealed religion. What was the use of God's Son becoming incarnate, agonizing in Gethsemane, and dying on the Cross to make atonement - if men can be finally saved without believing on Him? Where is the slightest proof in Scripture, that saving faith in Christ's blood can ever begin after death? Where is the need of the Holy Spirit, if sinners are at last to enter heaven without conversion and renewal of heart? Where can we find the smallest evidence that any one can be born again after death, and have a new heart - if he dies in an unregenerate state? If a man may escape eternal punishment at last, without faith in Christ or sanctification of the Spirit, sin is no longer an infinite evil, and there was no need for Christ to die on Calvary!

(2) Let us hold fast the doctrine of future eternal punishment, for the sake of holiness and morality. I can imagine nothing so pleasant to men, as the fallacious theory that we may live in sin - and yet escape eternal perdition; that although "we are slaves to many wicked desires and evil pleasures" while we are here in this world, we shall somehow or other, all get to heaven hereafter! Only tell the young man who is "wasting his substance in riotous living", that there is a heaven at last, even for those who live and die in sin, and he is never likely to turn from evil. What does it signify how he lives, if there is no "judgment to come?" Why should he repent and take up the cross - if he can get to heaven at last without trouble?

(3) Finally, let us hold it fast for the sake of the common hopes of all God's saints. Let us distinctly understand that every blow struck at the eternity of punishment, is an equally heavy blow at the eternity of reward. It is impossible to separate the two things. No clever theological definition can divide them.They stand or fall together. The same language is used, the same figures of speech are employed, when the Bible speaks about either condition. Every attack on the duration of hell is also an attack on the duration of heaven. It is a deep and true saying, "With the sinner's fear - our hope departs."

I turn from this section, with a strong sense of its painfulness. I feel keenly, with Robert M'Cheyne, that "it is a difficult subject to handle lovingly." But I turn from it with an equally strong conviction, that if we believe the Bible, we must never give up anything which it contains. From hard, austere, and unmerciful theology, Good Lord, deliver us! If men are not saved, it is not because God does not love them, and it not willing to save them - but because they will not come to Christ (John 5:40). But we must not be wise above that which is written. No morbid liberality, so called, must induce us to reject anything which God has revealed about the next world. Men sometimes talk exclusively about God's mercy and love and compassion, as if He had no other attributes, and leave out of sight entirely His holiness and His purity, His justice and His unchangeablenes, and His hatred of sin. Let us beware of falling into this delusion. It is a growing evil in these latter days.

Low and inadequate views of the unutterable and filthiness of sin, and of the unutterable purity of the eternal God, are fertile sources of error about  man's future state. Let us think of the mighty Being with Whom we have to do, as He Himself declared His character to Moses, saying, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, patience and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, and transgressions, and sin." But let us not forget the solemn clause which concludes the sentence - "And who will by no means clear the guilty" (Exodus 34:6-7). Unrepented sin is an eternal evil, and can never cease to be sin, and He with whom we have to do is an eternal God!

~J. C. Ryle~

(The End)