The Righteous are Scarcely Saved | The Whole Counsel

He mentions here the verse that Chuck mentioned early on out of 1 Peter chapter 4, where Peter says, and if it is with difficulty or scarcely that the righteous is saved, what will become of the godless man and the sinner?

So the King James Version, scarcely, New American Standard, difficulty, with difficulty.

So he says, now, we don't want to misunderstand this, we are not saying, Peter's not saying, that there is a possibility that the true believer will lose what

Christ has purchased, what the Father has promised, even from eternity. And so when we think of our security in Christ, we want to make sure that we understand why we're secure.

Some people will say it this way, I know that I'm secure and that I won't lose my salvation because a

Christian can't fall from grace. Well, in a sense, we can fall horribly, but no fall that occurs in our life will separate us from the love of God.

And we just want to back up and kind of get a foundation that's bigger than, you know, our good intentions.

Like, well, I would never leave Christ, wouldn't you? What if God left you to yourself? So we think of things like election, that even before God created, before time began,

God loved me and set his heart upon me and gave me as a gift to the

Son. We can think of other things, the purchasing, the calling, the indwelling of the

Spirit, the new nature, and what Paul calls the sealing of the Spirit.

It's as if we are a package that has been taped up and sealed by the Spirit, the Almighty Spirit of God, not to be tampered with by anybody until it's brought safely to the mediator, to Christ, at the end of time.

So, you know, many wonderful reasons that we have for knowing that we're secure.

So Peter's not saying, when he says the righteous are scarcely saved, that it's uncertain.

Meaning it is such an enormously difficult task, it takes

God to do it. Yeah. And Friedrich Heysen does point out that, by pointing to some other passages, what is meant by the idea of scarcity or scarcely saved, the

Greek word that's behind that is also used in Acts 14, 18 of Paul and Barnabas.

They're at Lystra, they heal a lame man, and the people there in Lystra start trying to worship them and calling them

Zeus and Hermes, and they're insisting, you know, don't worship us.

And Acts 14, 18 says, even saying these things with difficulty, or they were scarcely restrained, with difficulty they restrained the crowds from offering sacrifice to them.

Or another occasion in Acts 27, 16, Paul is on a ship and the weather has turned and they're in danger of shipwreck.

And the Bible says, running under the shelter of a small island called Clauda, we were scarcely able to get the ship's boat under control.

So both of those, they were able to get it, but it was difficult. They were able to keep the crowds from offering sacrifice, but it was difficult.

So scarcely does not imply that it's not, that a person's not saved, but the difficulty of that person coming to Christ.

There are many difficulties that accompany salvation. A lot of the older writers used to make a big deal about Christ's statement that the kingdom of God suffers violence, and the violent take it.

There is a holy violence. There is a holy desperation. There is a wholeheartedness, kind of we could think of a white, hot zeal that lays hold of a man when he realizes,

I have no hope but this Jesus, and I will have him, and I will follow him to the end of time.

So it does remind us of Christ's warnings. We'll just give you one example,

Luke 13, 24, Jesus says, strive to enter through the narrow door.

For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. So that goes hand in glove with what