Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening. And
now for today's program. Welcome to our program today,
I'm glad you could join us. If you'd like to follow along
in your Bibles, I'm going to be preaching from the book of
1 John, chapter two. 1 John, the first epistle that
the apostle John wrote to the church, chapter two. And the
title of the message today is Abiding in Christ. Abiding, now you know that word
abiding means to continue, to persevere. And in order to understand
what John is teaching here as he was inspired by the Spirit,
we need to make sure that we keep the context in mind. And
so I'm gonna go back and just read some passages that I dealt
with the last time that we went through, we're in this chapter. And he's speaking of the fact
that there were some professing believers back then within the
churches that he was writing to who had totally turned against. The gospel. They totally, they
left. They were men and women who believers
thought were their brethren, were sure that they were saved,
but then they turned around and bought into what John calls the
spirit of antichrist. Look at verse 18. He says, little
children, it is the last time, and as you have heard, that antichrist
shall come. Even now are there many antichrists
whereby we know that it is the last time. Now, you know the
term Antichrist usually catches people's attention because today
many are taught that Antichrist is one person who's coming in
the future who will be a great political and religious leader,
who will unite all kingdoms and all governments and be the agent
of Satan. And of course, the only time
you find the term Antichrist in the Bible is in the letters
of John. And this is one place where he
mentions that. And he calls it a spirit that
is already in the world. And the term Antichrist means
against Christ. And here's what he says that
that Antichrist Christian spirit does in verse 19. It says, they
went out from us but they were not of us. Now that's key to
understand that. He says, for if they had been
of us, they would no doubt have continued with us, they would
have abided in Christ. And he says, but they went out
that they might be made manifest, that they were not all of us.
So what he's saying here is that these people who bought into
this spirit of antichrist were at one time thought to be believers,
gave some evidence in their testimony, in their profession of doctrine,
that they knew Christ and believed in Christ, but because of some
reason, whether it's persecution, or whether it's lack of interest,
it may be to win friends and family and all of that, they
left the gospel, they left the church, they left Christ. They
turned against him. Now this is not just some, this
is not just a believer who's gotten lazy, understand. This is a person who now is totally
against Christ. I know of one person in my life
that I've met who's like this, and it was a man who claimed
to be a Christian, claimed to believe what the doctrine of
the gospel is, and now he claims to be an atheist. So he's turned
totally against Christ. That's the spirit of antichrist.
Now, what John says here is very important because this is what
I'm gonna talk about today as we go down through these scriptures,
abiding in Christ. And notice what he said in verse
19 again. He says, they went out from us,
but they were not of us. Now, what does that mean? Well,
he goes on, for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have
continued with us. If they were truly saved, by
the grace and the power of God, they would have been kept by
the grace and the power of God, and they would have abided, they
would have continued, and he says, but they went out that
they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. They're
going out, they're turning against the gospel, leaving the church,
leaving Christ, turning absolutely against him, only proved that
they had never been saved to begin with. And of course, what
we're talking about is what people commonly call once saved, always
saved. Now, not everybody who claims
to be a Christian believes that. But those who don't believe that
don't know the gospel. They do not believe the gospel.
Listen to what he says in verse 20. But you have an unction from
the Holy One, and you know all things. I preached on this last
time. This is an unction. This is the
anointing that comes by the Spirit of God as He is sent from Christ. the one who died for the sins
of his people, who was buried and arose again the third day,
resurrection life, that unction, that anointing, is the power
of the Spirit to give life in the new birth. And what he's
saying here is that if the Spirit has come forth from Christ, the
Holy One, and given you the resurrection life of Christ in the new birth,
brought you literally from the dead. See, by nature we're spiritually
dead and we must be born again. And the Holy Spirit is the sovereign
agent in that great work of the new birth, in the regeneration,
we call it. Under the preaching of the gospel,
he comes forth and he gives life to the dead and he brings us
to believe in Christ and to repent of dead works. He gives us the
gift of faith and repentance. And that's that unction from
the Holy One. And that's what John is saying,
but you won't leave him, he says. because you have an unction from
the Holy One and you know all things, all things pertaining
to salvation. Look at verse 21. I have not
written unto you because you know not the truth, but because
you do know the truth and that no lie is of the truth. John
is saying here that I'm not writing you because I'm in doubt of you
and think that you don't know the truth. But I know that you
know it, and you know that no lie is of the truth. And so in
verse 22, he says, who is a liar, but he that denieth that Jesus
is the Christ. That Jesus of Nazareth is the
Messiah. And he says, he is anti-Christ
that denieth the Father and the Son. So there's that spirit of
Antichrist again. One who denies the Father and
the Son. Basically, the spirit of Antichrist
is any spirit that denies that Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory,
is the one and only Savior of sinners. But this spirit of Antichrist
is specifically directed to those who at one time claimed to believe
it, but they did not abide in it. They did not continue in
it. One of the cardinal doctrines
of the gospel, of true Christianity, is not, and you can say it any
way you want. Some people say once saved, always
saved. Some people call it the security
of the believer or the security of the saved. One of the doctrines, that doctrine
is stated in another way, perseverance of the saints. persevering, abiding,
continuing. In other words, if you're truly
saved by the grace of God, if you've truly been born again
by the Spirit, if you truly have this unction from the Holy One,
you will not leave Christ totally. You will not turn against Him.
Now many people in certain denominations, they say, well, you can be saved,
but if you don't keep this and keep that and do this and do
that, you can lose it. That's not what the scripture
teaches. The scripture teaches that sinners
are saved by grace, based on the blood and the righteousness
of Christ, sinners are kept preserved by grace based upon the blood
and righteousness of Christ, and sinners will enter glory
in the afterlife by grace based on the blood and
righteousness of Christ. That's what the scripture teaches.
Now, you can call it once saved, always saved, and you can bring
every objection you want to bring. People say, well, if that's the
case, then I don't have to obey and I don't have to do this.
That's not what that doctrine teaches. That's just what those
who are unbelievers raise against it. Because they don't have any
other motivation to obedience than legalism and mercenary,
a mercenary spirit. In other words, the only reason
they are trying to be obedient, as they say, is because they're
afraid that God will kick them out of the family. Or they're
doing it because of some mercenary earned reward. I'm doing it because
I want better rewards. And that's not a, listen, that's
not a child of God, that's not a servant of Christ, that's a
mercenary. But you see, obedience, the obedience of a truly sinner
saved by grace, a sinner truly saved by grace, is motivated
not by legalism or a mercenary spirit of earned reward, It's
motivated by love, by grace, by gratitude. That's the motive
that God, the Holy Spirit, implants in the heart. And that's what
he's talking about. He's saying, those of you who
are truly born again, he said, now here's some people, they
claim to believe it, you thought they were brothers and sisters
in Christ, but now they've left it, turned totally against it,
even some to the point of calling Christ a cursed, just like the
man I was telling you about who now claims to be an atheist,
they never were saved. That may shock you. It may surprise
you. You may say, well, I know they
were saved because look at what happened in their lives. They
quit drinking, they quit smoking, they quit doing, that has nothing
to do with it. They've turned against Christ.
and they never were born again truly. They just had a profession
of faith, but they did not have a heart confession. And so they
turned against it. But you who have truly been born
again, You who have this unction from the Holy One, you can never
leave it. Now that doesn't mean you're
not gonna sway one way or another and get lazy, it doesn't mean
that we can't stray away for a while, but God will not allow
us. We who are sinners saved by grace
in Christ, Christ who now sits at the right hand of the Father,
ever living to make intercession for His people, God will not
allow us to turn against Him, to leave it totally. And that's
what John is talking about in the rest of these verses and
down into chapter three. It's impossible for a sinner
truly saved by grace to totally forsake Christ. That sinner,
by the grace and power of God, will abide in Christ, will continue,
will persevere. And the reason it's impossible
for a sinner truly saved by grace to leave Christ are numerous.
Number one, their sins can never be charged to them. If they're
truly God's elect, the Bible says in Romans 8, 33, I believe
it is, who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifies. God
has not imputed or charged their sins to them. And if sin is not
charged to you, you cannot be condemned. God has imputed Christ's
righteousness to them. And they stand before God in
the righteousness of Christ, His righteousness imputed. David
spoke of it. Or Paul spoke of it, he's quoting
David, in Romans chapter four and verse six, when he spoke
of the blessedness of the man to whom the Lord imputeth righteousness
without works. So who shall anything to the
charge of God's elect? It's God that justify. Who can
condemn us? It goes on to say in verse 34,
it's Christ that died and is risen from the dead and is seated
at the right hand of the Father ever living to make intercession
for us. So if you're truly saved, truly born again, been truly
brought to faith, really, savingly, you can never leave Christ totally,
because God won't let you. And that's another thing. They
are preserved in Christ. We who are truly saved are preserved. We persevere, but only because
we are preserved by the power of God, Christ spoke of that
in John chapter 10. He said, no one shall pluck them
out of my father's hand. He said, I and my father are
one. The devil cannot take you out of God's family and you cannot
even take yourself because God won't allow it. He preserves
us by his power and his glory. You see, God is glorified in
the salvation of His people. The Bible says that Christ is
able to save to the uttermost them that come unto the Father
by Him. Paul said it. He said, I know whom I have believed
and I'm persuaded that He's able to keep that which I've committed
unto Him against that day. And what have I committed unto
Him? My whole salvation's committed unto Him. None of it's committed
unto me. None of it's conditioned on me.
And that's another reason we can't be lost if we're truly
saved. All of my salvation, if it's by grace, is conditioned
on Christ and He fulfilled those conditions completely so that
I will never be condemned. Romans 8, 1, there is therefore
now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. There's
no possibility. Another reason they cannot be
lost is nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ.
Read Romans 8, 35 through 39 sometimes. Sit down and read
the whole thing. Who shall separate us from the love of God in Christ?
And basically what Paul says there is nothing can do it. If
God sent his love upon a sinner and saves that sinner by grace,
nothing can separate him from that love. And then we have the
inward working and presence of the Holy Spirit that unction
from the Holy One. And John says that that unction
is enough to keep us. The Holy Spirit will not let
us go. Christ will not let us go. The
Father will not let us go. Look back at verse 23 of 1 John
2. He says, whosoever denieth the
Son, the same hath not the Father. Now, the next line here is in
italics. in the King James version. And
what that means is it was added by the King James translators.
And there's nothing wrong with that if it expresses the truth,
obviously. And they're just going to the
flip side, but he that acknowledgeth the son hath the father also.
And the Bible teaches that. The only way that we can come
to the Father, God the Father, and be accepted eternally is
through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shed His blood to
pay for the sins of His sheep, His people, God's elect, and
worked out righteousness whereby God accepts them and blesses
them and saves them. His righteousness imputed. So
he says in verse 24, let that therefore abide in you, which
you have heard from the beginning. Now what he's saying here is
on the sinner's side, we're to determine in our minds, as we
are brought into the knowledge of Christ, as we are shown the
sinfulness of our persons, of our works, I mean, you think
about it. We fell in Adam and we're born
dead in trespasses and sin and God saves us out of that state.
But we're still sinners, sinners saved by grace. And if God were
to judge us right now, if God were to judge me right now based
upon my best efforts to serve Him, I'd be damned forever. Because
my best works do not measure up to the perfection of righteousness
that can only be found in Christ. Christ is my righteousness. My
works, even as a believer, are not good enough to save me or
keep me saved or bring me to glory. And the only way that
my works can be accepted with God is as they are washed and
presented in the blood of Christ, cleansed from all my sin. But
He's given me the Spirit of God who resides within me and created
within me a new spirit, a new heart, a new mind, a new way
of thinking, thinking of grace now. And he says, I'm to determine
in my mind to let that abide within me that I heard from the
beginning, the same gospel. You know, today I'm preaching
the same gospel that I first believed 40 some years ago. And
it's never changed. Now, I hope I've grown in grace
and in knowledge. I've studied the scriptures.
There are things I've learned. There are things that God has
used to change my mind about the interpretation of certain
scriptures. But the gospel of God's grace has never changed
one iota. It's a perfect gospel. It'll
never change. There needs no addition, no subtraction. It's God's grace. all conditioned
on Christ to save his sinners from their sins by the blood
of the God-man, the mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ. My surety,
my substitute, my redeemer. It's His righteousness, the very
righteousness of God revealed in the gospel. That's what saves
me, that's what keeps me, and that's what'll bring me to glory,
Christ alone. And that's never changed. So
let that therefore abide in you, which you've heard from the beginning.
He says, if that which you have heard from the beginning shall
remain in you, you also shall continue in the Son and in the
Father. In other words, if you truly
heard the gospel from the beginning, the true gospel, and that remains
in you, you'll continue in the Son and in the Father. You won't
leave. That's what he's saying. How
do I know that God truly saved me by His grace? Well, if that
which you've heard from the beginning shall remain in you. Think about
it this way. If you really believe this gospel,
can anybody talk you out of it? This fellow I was telling you
about, who's now an atheist, somebody talked him out of it.
He claimed to believe the exact same doctrine of the scriptures,
and seemed to be a brother in Christ. But I think he got a
hold of some philosophy books, and maybe some science books,
and some books that were attacking the Bible, and it turned his
mind. He got talked out of it, and
he bought into the spirit of Antichrist. If that which he
heard from the beginning remained in him, which it didn't, he would
have continued in the Father and the Son. He would have continued
in the gospel. But he never was truly saved.
If you can be talked out of it, then you never truly believed
it. Because if the Spirit of God convinces you, you know that's
what the Bible says when we're born again, It's the Spirit of
God giving spiritual life, ears to hear, eyes to see, all of
that, a new heart, and convincing us of sin and of righteousness
and of judgment, of the gospel, of Christ, of sin because we,
by nature, didn't believe in Him. In other words, He shows
us what we are by nature. Sinners who need salvation by
grace. Sinners who have left to ourselves
would not choose Him, but He chose me. and righteousness because
Christ went to the Father, that's His righteousness, that's the
merit of His obedience unto death as my surety, my substitute,
my redeemer. He's my life giver, He's my preserver,
all of that. And so I look to Christ for righteousness,
for forgiveness, for eternal life and of judgment because
the prince of this world is cast out. That is that when Christ
died for my sins on the cross, I was judged right there in him. He took the wrath of God that
I deserved and he drank damnation dry. So it's a convincing. Now, if you've heard it and God
has brought you to believe it and the Holy Spirit has convinced
you of it, let me give you these three things. You cannot ignore
it, you cannot deny it, and you cannot leave it. Do you hear
that? Mark that in your mind. That's
what he's saying there. Again, verse 24, let that therefore
abide in you, which you have heard from the beginning. If
that which you have heard from the beginning shall remain in
you, you also shall continue in the Son and in the Father.
If what the Holy Spirit put within me, in my heart, in my mind,
remains in me, and it will if He put it there, all right, I
cannot ignore it, I cannot deny it, and I cannot leave it. I
will continue. And he says in verse 25, listen
to this, and this is the promise that he hath promised us even
eternal life. Did you notice there? He didn't
say, and this is the promise that you made to God. Now we
may make many promises to God, but my friend, our promises all
too often fall by the wayside. We're either unable to fulfill
the promise because we didn't foresee all the obstacles or
couldn't provide all the means, or we're just unfaithful because
we're sinners if we're saved by grace. But God's promises
never fail. He's faithful. Over in the book
of Lamentations in chapter three, I believe it's verse 21, he says,
it is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed And I think
verse 22 says, they are great. They're just so precious every
day. Great is thy faithfulness. They're new every morning. Great
is thy faith. God has never gone back on a
promise that he's made. And 2 Corinthians 1 20 tells
us that all the promises of God are yea, which means sure and
amen and certain in Christ. God is the promise, you know,
I hear this organization called the promise keepers. Well, anytime
we make promises, we ought to keep those promises. There's
no doubt about it, but we'll often fail. But you see the real
promise keeper is God. And this is the promise that
he hath promised us. And what is that promise? It's
not salvation if you do your part. It's not eternal life if
you'll keep on keeping on. It is eternal life. And this
is all by, from God, promised of God through Jesus Christ.
And so he says in verse 26, he says, these things have I written
unto you concerning them that seduce you. This shows you what's
happening here in the churches that John is writing to. There
were false preachers, unbelievers, who were creeping into the church,
talking to the believers, trying to seduce them away from the
gospel. And they succeeded in some of
them, those who went out from them. But he says, I'm writing
you these things because those who are trying to seduce you,
they won't be successful if you have that unction from the Holy
One. If that which abides in you continues by the power and
the grace and the purpose of God. That's what he's doing. I'm warning you. I'm warning
you. We'll pick up next week. I hope
you'll join us for another message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
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today and may the Lord be with you.