WHY I BELIEVE IN ETERNAL LIFE

By: Ralph A. Crawford

Scripture: Psalms 89: 28-36

“ . .My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.”

A distinctive doctrine of the people called Baptist is the belief that once you are saved, you are saved forever. This truth does not fit human reasoning, for it sounds too good to be true. And besides that, our life in this world is not familiar with nor are we associated with any benefits and possessions that have a stamp of eternity on it. Nothing that we see or touch in this world has the stamp of perpetual permanence. Women call some certain hair styles “permanents.” but I have noticed that my wife needs a new one about every three months. Honesty would demand that they call those hair styles “Temporaries.”

Eternal Life has to be something out-of-this- world. And that is exactly where it came from, out of this world! When God put people in this world, He gave them dominion over all things. Man has taken advantage of this privileged position and has found many ways to improve the quality of life, but we can’t make it last forever. Scientific discoveries have extended our lives and provided us comfortable living against the harsh seasons of nature. But Hebrews 9:27 says, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die,.” If Jesus continues to delay the Rapture (calling the church up), our departure of this world will be through death.

I. What The Bible Says About Eternal Life

The only eternal life we know anything about is the “eternal life” that God has promised to those who repent of their sins and put their faith in Jesus to be saved. This eternal life in Jesus is the only real joy and peace I know about in this old world of heartaches, sorrow and death. God’s promise of eternal life takes away the fear of death and gives meaning to the years we spend on this earth. If there is no life after death, what is so important about this life? This earthly life can only give us a brief existence. We will have a few short years of health, and then old age and then disease will ultimately take us down. What then? Is that all there is to it? There is something in the mind and nature of every human being that there is a better life somewhere. The Apostle Paul explained it this way, (1 Corinthians 15: 19) “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” The only thing that can lift us from such a hopeless misery is the “Eternal Life” God has provided and offered to all people.

Let us examine this eternal life gift. Who is capable of giving Eternal Life? A giver of eternal life must in His own person exceed the gift He is giving. He must have the power and resources to give such a gift. He must have all power and all knowledge to overcome the destroyers of life. We know by the study of the Old and New Testament that God has out maneuvered and has over come the forces of Satan to provide a salvation which guarantees us an everlasting life. God has given evidence in His Word that He has the power to provide and maintain eternal life for anyone who accepts it. Eternal life is never referred to as something a person can earn or deserve, nor is it something he can keep by his own conduct and discipline. “It is truly a gift of God, not a deserved reward for perfect obedience.

We see clearly in both Old and New Testaments that God is referred to as an eternal person. He has always existed, and He will always exist. Some one has said, “God has always been, is, and shall always be.” (Such words are easy to say, but are difficult for our minds to fathom) In Genesis 9 God’s covenant with Noah was called an everlasting covenant. In Genesis 17, God’s covenant with Abraham was called everlasting. In Daniel 4, God’s Kingdom is called everlasting. And In Psalms 89: 30, God’s Covenant with King David is forever. God said, “Even if his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; If they break my statues, and keep not my commandments; Then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes, Nevertheless my loving kindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail. My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips. Once have I sworn by my holiness that I will not lie unto David.” The covenants and gifts of God bear His everlasting and eternal nature. Only God could make such a promise. Without a doubt, the only place you can receive gifts, blessings, and promises that are lasting and eternal are those promises that God gives and are recorded in the Scriptures.

In the New Testament, the language of God’s salvation is repeated many times expressing the everlasting quality of salvation. This rings true and consistent to the eternal and everlasting qualities of God given in the Old Testament. The words eternal and everlasting appear 62 times in the New Testament in reference to the salvation in Christ. John 3:16, Jesus says “..they shall not perish but have everlasting life.” And in John 5:24, Jesus says we “shall not come into condemnation; but we are passed from death unto life.” And again in John 10:27, Jesus says “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me, and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand, My father which gave them me is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. I and my Father are one.” John 3:36, John the Baptist says “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life…” Romans 8:38, Paul says that “ neither death, life, angels, principalities, powers, things present, things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The apostle Peter says in First Peter 1: 4, “we have an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” Then in the book of Jude verse 24 we read, “Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy,..” Rev. Homer Martinez came to Olivet one year and preached about the three scriptures which describes the “positional location” of the believers. He had us to imagine three circles drawn like a target. He said the inner circle represented Christ, for in 2 Corinthians 5:7 says we are “In Christ.” In the next circle we are “in God,” for Colossians 3: 3 says “your life is hid with Christ in God.” And the outer circle is Ephesians 4:30, “ye are sealed by the Holy Spirit.” So Homer said, we are In Christ and In God, and Sealed by the Holy Spirit. If the devil wanted to get to us, he would have to get inside the Spirit, Inside God and Inside Christ. And if the devil ever got fully into the Trinity, he would be saved and he couldn’t get out. Of course, no such thing is possible for Satan, but Homer was showing how protected and secure we are as believers. Jesus did say that we cannot be plucked out of the Father’s Hand. The Lord’s words may give some credence to Brother Homer’s analogy.

II. Martin’s Luther’s Problem With Indulgences

These powerful descriptive words of eternal life fill the gospels and epistles of the New Testament with such multiplied depth and weight of scriptures that it cannot be contradicted. Martin Luther was a professor in the University in Wittenberg, Germany. He made trips to Rome to crawl up and down the Scala Sancta, (symbolizing the Holy Stairs which Jesus crawled up to Pilate) saying prayers on each step for souls to be liberated from Purgatory and Hell. However, as a student of the Biblical languages, the words of salvation so simply stated in scripture caused him to wonder if what he was doing was a proper way to deal with sin. This led him to nail 95 Theological doctrines on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg to challenge the church leaders to a debate. This debate never happened. Many of the churches which came out of the Roman Church after the reformation retained the believed that a person could loose his salvation. A considerable amount of money was raised from those people who paid for their sins to be forgiven by the many sacraments, sacred relics, prayers on the Scala Sancta, Mass celebrations, burning of candles, and money paid in confessional booths. The Pope authorized these credits of goodness to be applied to those whose accounts of sins were in the arrears. This was called the sell of indulgences. When my parents were married in Dustin, Oklahoma, Mom was not a Baptist. My Dad was a Baptist, and he spoke positively that he knew he was saved and bound for heaven, but my Mother was not taught that in her church. Dad taught his first three children that salvation was eternal, and they were saved and joined the Baptist church. But Mom was not that sure about it. She was taught by her father that no one knows in this life whether they are saved or lost. He told Mom that all the good that a person does in this life must be compared to all the bad he does, and if your bad outweighs the good then you go to hell, and if the good out weighs the bad, then you go to heaven. Mom said she was afraid to go to sleep at night because she did not know whether she was saved or lost. She said she was afraid Jesus would come back for His people, and He would take Jim and the children and leave her here. I can remember Mom saying, “When I learned what it meant to be saved, and knew that I was kept by the power of God, and I didn’t have to worry about my salvation, I was relieved with great joy and peace. Life really took on a new meaning.” No wonder that one of her favorite hymns was “Blessed Assurance Jesus is mine Oh’ what a foretaste of glory divine.”

For any one who reads the Bible, it is plain to see that God has prepared a salvation for us that is beyond our wildest dreams. Nothing we humans can imagine can come close to the plan of salvation God has designed. It is offered to us absolutely free, without any physical effort, merit or payment on our part. God Himself maintains the security of our salvation, and adopts us into His family, and begins preparing us a house, not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” No wonder Paul quotes Isaiah 64: 4 in 1 Corinthians 2:9, “Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” I have never met a person who has every suggested any improvements to the plan God has made for our salvation.

III. Problems Some Have With Eternal Life

But did you know there are those who can read all these descriptive words about Salvation and yet become skeptical that God saves and keeps. One of the major objections to security is stated in these very human words. “You get what you pay for.” In other words, nothing is free, God initiates salvation, but we have to live it to keep it. I noticed on a Church marquee this saying: “If you don’t live it, you don’t have it.” I have heard some people call this idea “a foot race against Satan.” God saves me, and it’s my duty to overcome the wiles of Satan. But God doesn’t leave us in such a precarious situation. The answer to this objection has to do with Relationship to God, and our liability to punishment if we persist in disobedience to the will of our heavenly Father. When we accept salvation, we also accept our adopted Father’s authority over us. Hebrews 12:5 will help us at this point. Our Heavenly Father loves us so much that He will punish us if we do not obey Him. “My son despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou are rebuked of Him. For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards (KJV) and not sons.” Chastisement is a sign of ownership. My earthly dad punished me because I belonged to him. No other man on the block laid a hand on me. It was not their right. I belonged to Jim Crawford. And I must say he lived up to his responsibility.

Sometimes when God sees that our conduct is not going to improve and meet His approval, He may just call us on home. If we can’t be trusted to live on earth and act like God wants to us act, He may cut short our earthly residence. First Corinthians 11: 30 tells about some people in the Corinthian church who had fallen asleep (died) because they persisted in sinful and hypocritical partaking of the Lord’s Supper. This was a serious judgment of the Lord, but not a loss of their salvation. The Lord simply brought them home. God will not let His children live any way they choose, for He is in control and He will exercise His authority to punish us when we need it. When I was in high school I had a History teacher whose name was Mrs. More. One day I was “cutting up” with some of my friends on the back row, and she told me to get my books and come up to the front and take Mary Jane’s seat right in front of her desk. The whole class saw me take those humbling steps to that front seat, all because she could not trust me to sit on the back row. Mrs. More was not going to let me be a disturbance to her class, so I was moved closer to her authority and discipline. God doesn’t want us to be a disturbance to His Kingdom work here on earth. If we persist He may move us up closer.

IV. The Problem Of Free Will

Some do not believe in Soul Security because they think it robs them of their “Free Will.” Well, it really does. But some people think that they should have the right and ability to renounce their faith, to wipe out their repentance, to cut off their belief and be unsaved again. I can’t imagine a person who knows what it means to be saved ever wanting to be lost again. I would have to believe that such a person had never really experienced true salvation. A person who trusts Jesus must realize that he is giving up all rights to his life. Salvation is a surrender, that’s why we sing the Invitation Hymn, “I Surrender All.” Paul says, (1 Corinthians 6: 19-20) “ye are not your own, you have been bought with a price.” Trusting Jesus is like jumping off a building. You exercise your free will to jump, but after you jump you loose your “free will.” You are now in the power of gravity. Angel Martinez says that if you jump into grace to be saved it grabs you and will not let you go. You have been had! Just like gravity takes over after you jump, so God’s Grace takes over after you are saved. You can’t take it back, because grace will not undo what it has produced. There’s no “kings-X.” Since God’s grace is what saved us, it will not relinquish its power over us. It is far more powerful than gravity. In fact, one day the Lord will release us from the pull of gravity, and we will be taken up into heaven, but we will never get away from the power of grace. We can say that “God’s grace” brings or produces our salvation, and it does not release its divine grip.

V. What About The Christian’s Liability To Sin?

Another problem we have as believers is our liability to sin. There are some people who actually believe that when you become a Christian you don’t sin any more. I wish that was true. If I could just keep from sinning I wouldn’t feel so guilty about sinning against God’s Love. For God’s love (Grace) is so perfect that there is nothing good I can do to make Him love me more, nor can I do any thing bad that would make Him love me less.” Any person who thinks they do not sin are just fooling themselves. The scriptures are very clear at this point, for we still have an old sin nature to battle with till we die. In 1 John 1: 8, the apostle says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” You will notice he says, “If we… ” that means Christians. If we go around saying that we are sinless, John says “the truth is not in us.” And people who do not have the truth in themselves are liars. Perhaps the best passage to refute the idea of sinless perfection is found in Romans 7: 18-25. In verse 19 Paul says, “For the good that I would, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.” Paul is so overwhelmed by his weakness to sin he says in verse 24, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.”

I had a wonderful friend in O.B.U. who was a dedicated Christian and very faithful to his church, but he believed a person could loose his salvation. He sat next to me in Latin class. One day we were getting ready to take a pop quiz conjugating verbs and declining nouns. I ask him what could causes a person to loose his salvation. And he answered with one word, “sin.” I then ask him how much sin does it take? And he said, “That’s difficult to say.” So I ask him if I copied off your paper during this test and wrote the conjugation of the verbs, would that cause me to loose my salvation? He immediately said, “Oh’ no, nothing that small and insignificant.” Then I asked him if I copied all the conjugations from his paper, and he still said, “No, that’s still too small.” Then I ask him “do you think cheating on a test is a sin?” He immediately said, “Yes indeed, cheating is a sin.” But you think I can still be a Christian if I steal the conjugation of verbs, but what if I not only steal your verbs, but the nouns also, would I loose my salvation. He looked like he hated to tell me, but he said, “No, I don’t think this one test would make you loose your salvation, but I do believe you are getting close.”

Some churches put sin in categories called Venial and Cardinal. Meaning that some sins are forgivable and some are unforgivable. Many people think God judges sin in categories of “little sins” and “big sins.” I know of no place in the Scriptures where sins are declared little and big. To God sin is sin. James records in chapter two verse ten “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.” Just think of it, one little sin unconfessed and unforgiven is enough to make me guilty of the whole law. So if sin, can cause me to loose my salvation, one little sin will do it just as quickly as a combination of big ones.

For argument sake, let us say that a person can sin and loose his salvation. The big question then is: can that person be saved again? Most people who believe you can be lost after you are saved, also believe you can be saved again. Is that really possible? Can a person experience multiple times of being lost and saved? Someone has said if such a thing could happen, then we would have to change the words Jesus spoke to Nicodemus to read like this: “Ye must be born again and again, and again.” But let us see if the Bible speaks to this situation. In Hebrews 6: 1-6 I believe the author is building a hypothetical case when he describes true born again believers who have “been enlightened, who have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and had tasted of the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they then should fall away, (it would be impossible) to renew them again unto repentance, seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame.” Dr. Angel Martinez says of this passage, “Here we have it clearly taught that you are either once saved always saved, or twice lost always lost.” Dr. Henry Morris, editor of the Defender’s Bible says, “Many who appear to be true Christians and who may even believe themselves to be true Christians, can and do fall away and come to deny and oppose the faith they once thought they believed. They could not truly have believed it, however, or they would never have allowed doubts to come in and supersede the overwhelming evidence of its truth.” The Apostle John sums it up this way in 1 John 2: 19. “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for it they had been of us: they would no doubt have continued with us, but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.”

VI. Eternal Salvation Will Encourage Righteous Living

Some have asked me why do Christians try to live obedient lives when their salvation is not depended on how they live. Why is there such an emphasis on righteous living, with honesty, cleanliness of speech and purity of lives? I would say first of all that God would be pleased to see us striving for the mark of His high calling in Christ Jesus. Right living catches God’s eye. Job caught His eye in chapter one verse six when the sons of God came to present themselves, and Satan came also among them. “And the Lord said unto Satan, “Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?” God notices all of His servants in the world. He noticed Job and gave him a tremendous recommendation. Living the right kind of life will glorify our Heavenly Father, and help preserve our civilization. That’s the number one reason for living righteously.

The Bible says that “Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.” (Proverbs 14:34) Dr. Henry Morris says of this passage: The unique blessings of God on the American nation are primarily attributable to the spiritual conviction and motivation of so many of its founders and pioneers; its present moral decline and religious apathy and apostasy is an ominous portent for the future.” Obedience to God is good for all those benefits that preserve and protect life and civilization. If God’s people sin they smear the name of Jesus in the public news and bring shame to His church. No wonder my Dad told me when I got on the bus to leave for military service, “Be a good soldier, and remember who you are.” He wanted me to remember that I was a Christian and a Crawford. Don’t do anything that will bring shame on those names.

Living a life God approves is the greater part of our witness to this world. If we are not different because of who we are, it really doesn’t make any difference what we say. Our practice must precede our preaching. The effect of our faith and the spread of the good news is empowered more by the kind of lives we live than by the intellectual persuasion of our argument. In Acts 4: 8 – 13, the rulers of the people and the elders of Israel saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, yet they marveled and took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus. To repent and trust Jesus, and receive this wonderful Eternal Life will direct us to live lives that will enforce and support the gospel we preach.

While living in New York City during World War II attending electrical school, I had many opportunities to take a spiritual holiday from living the Christian life. My army class was billeted in the Broadway Central Hotel. Not far from the hotel was a place called Greenwich Village. There was a night club there featuring dancing girls that were very scantily clad. Large pictures of the girls were plastered all over the front of the building. Well being from Nowata, I had never seen anything like this. I considered my strong curiosity urge to go in and see the show. I argued with my conscience, that I should not miss this opportunity to learn some the revealing facts of life. After all, soldiers could go in free, and I would be just another anonymous soldier in the crowd. While I walked up and down the side walk in from of the club trying to convince myself that it would be alright to go in, I had to adjust by coat over my chest against the cold January wind in New York.City. When I did that I felt my dog tags on my chest. Then suddenly it flashed in my mind, If I go in there, just as sure as you’re born, that place will catch on fire and burn to the ground. And when the fire is out, they’ll start digging around in the ashes trying discover the bodies of the victims. And in my mind’s eye I could see them find my dog tags, and they could read on them, CRAWFORD, RALPH A. 384 71 872. Then I could see the headline in the Nowata Star, LOCAL BOY BURNS TO DEATH IN NEW YORK BURLESQUE HALL. Ralph A. Crawford, son of Mr. & Mrs. J.M. Crawford of 400 So. Willow was burned to death in a tragic fire in a New York City Night Club.

Then I remembered what Dad said to me at the bus station. “Remember who you Are!” I turned and beat it back to the hotel and didn’t go about that place the rest of the time I was in the City. Christians can’t afford to lose their creditability as witnesses for the Lord. Knowing that we cannot be lost, should encourage us to live for Jesus at all cost.