Strong Warnings and Sure Grace

The Race of Faith and the Call to Persevere

I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 9. And we are going to be looking just at the last few verses, verses 24 to 27. Lord willing, we'll complete the chapter today.

1 Corinthians chapter 9, verse 24. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things.

They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control. Lest after preaching to others, I myself should become disqualified.

Father in heaven, I thank you for your word. I thank you that even now your word has gone forth. And in the reading of the word, this is where we find the very truth of God. We believe that the word, the Bible, is our sole infallible rule for faith.

And so we place our trust in what it says. And I pray that today as I seek to give an understanding of it as your mouthpiece, Lord, I pray that you would keep me from error. Because I know of my own capacities for failure as a fallible man.

I pray, O Lord, that you would enlighten the eyes of your people, open their ears to the truth. Father, for the believer today, I pray that they would be edified, encouraged, reproved and corrected. And for the unbeliever, Lord, I pray that they would be evangelized, that the gospel would go forth into their ears.

And Lord God, that you would do that which only you can do, and that is convert the soul. Lord, may today be the day of salvation for those who hear the word and know not the son. We pray this all in Jesus name.

Amen. We are continuing this morning in our study of 1 Corinthians. And if you have not been a part of what we have been doing, I just give you a quick update as to where we are. We've been studying verse by verse through the book of 1 Corinthians and moving along at a, not a slow pace, but not a fast one either.

Just going from verse to verse and seeking to understand what the apostle Paul wrote in this very important book of the Bible. In our last session, we looked at verses 19 to 22, and we discussed the concept of soul winning.

We noted that in chapter 9, Paul says that he was willing to do whatever was in his power to win a soul, all the while knowing that it is God who actually converts the sinner. Paul is not the one who converts the sinner.

Paul is not the one who changes a person's heart. And a person doesn't change their own heart. The leopard can't change his spots. The Ethiopian cannot change his skin. Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil.

It is God alone who changes the heart. Paul, yet knowing this says, I'm not going to put any obstacle up that would keep me from reaching someone. I'm not going to allow anything to get in the way of the gospel, especially me.

So he says, I'm going to, to the Jews, I'm going to become as a Jew, to those under the law, I'm going to become as one under the law, even though I'm not under the law, and to those who aren't under the law, I'm going to become as one who isn't under the law, though I'm not going to give up my morality in Christ, meaning I'm not going to become a sinner to save sinners, but I will go to them and love them and minister to them in their condition.

And then he said, to the weak, I become weak. And in Paul's day, those walls that were dividing people were fairly obvious. The Jews had their very strict guidelines of behavior that they lived under and that they were restricted by.

And the pagans had their societal influences and cultural things that they did. And Paul said he was free to do the things that were necessary and would do the things that were necessary for the sake of their consciences.

When he was with the Jews, he would be as the Jews with their restrictions. When he was with the Gentiles, he would be as they are with their liberties. He was going to be all things to all men so that he might in some way be used of God to save them.

Now, I didn't really last week talk much about application on that. And before we get into verses 24 to 27, because this is all in the same context, I just want to sort of bring out an application, because the question is, well, what would that look like in our day?

We talked a lot about last week what Paul meant, but what would it look like today? How would we apply the all things to all men? I think that has been misapplied in many instances. People say, well, I smoke pot to win pot smokers, or I get drunk to win drunkards.

I don't think that's what Paul meant, and I'm certain it wasn't. But we can know what he didn't mean, but what do we know what he meant? And I was thinking this week about missionary Scott Phillips. I don't know if you guys remember when Scott was here.

Scott is a missionary to the Tao tribe in Indonesia. And when he goes there, he lives among them, and he lives as them. And yet he goes with the gospel when he goes. And I remember the first time I met Scott, he's a very different character.

When you meet him, you can tell he's lived in the bush, and he's just got this sort of this air about him as a man who's been out in the wild. And when he came in, he had this silver rod that was in his nose.

And I didn't quite understand what it was, but what that was was in that particular culture, the men would wear a wooden stake through the interior of their nose. And that was what he put there when he was in country, because, of course, he's not going to walk around America with a wooden stake stuck through his nose.

But he had this metal piece that was there, I guess, to keep the hole open and keep it free of debris and things like that. And I just remember seeing that. I was thinking, now there's a man who's wanting to be all things to all men.

There's a man who doesn't want his not having that in his nose to be a cultural divide. I've thought about missionaries, what they have to do to reach the people that they reach. What do they have to learn when it comes to languages and things to do, things not to do?

You know, if you go to a restaurant in America, you tip your waitress because that's what you're expected to do. You go to Japan and you do that and it's offensive. And if you didn't know that, you might.

A lot of times we give gospel tracks and we give tips. They may think you're trying to sell them the gospel or buy them as believers. And so you have to think about how you're going to reach people and not put up walls.

Paul was about breaking down the barriers that he could while never substituting the truth. In America, it might not be so obvious because we are such a hodgepodge of cultures. I was thinking about this also this week.

I was thinking about the fact that it's almost impossible not to offend someone nowadays. You know, it's almost impossible not to have some walls put up. Because you don't even know sometimes if you wear your hair a certain way, you're appropriating a culture and now you're offensive.

Or if you do this, you're going to. So sometimes it's impossible. But ultimately, I think a safe application of Paul's words would be this. Set your heart to win the lost and pray that God would give you opportunities.

And when God puts lost people in your life, look for ways to communicate the gospel to them. And look for things which may hinder you and remove them. I think that's the best, simplest application I can come up with.

And here's a life example from my own life. You all know I basically work as a chaplain with a funeral home. I'm not officially that, but I do so many funerals. I pretty much am. I work with a Corey Kerlin funeral home.

And I probably do one or two a month for families that don't have ministers. And you know one thing that I do when I go and I preach the gospel? I preach from the King James Bible. Now, when I preach here, we preach from the English Standard Bible or the New American Standard Bible.

We don't use the King James. But why do I use the King James when I preach funerals? Because to a lot of people, that is the Bible. And I am not going there to argue the semantics of textual criticism.

I'm going there to preach the gospel. And if there's going to be a wall that is going to separate me from these people, I don't want it to be that I didn't say thee and thou when I was preaching. That's such a minute thing.

That is such a minor thing that doesn't matter in the grand scheme of the gospel that I'm willing to set aside a liberty that I have and use what is tearing down a wall that might be in between me and that person.

Matthew Henry said this. He said, Though Paul would not transgress the law of Christ to please any man, he would accommodate himself to all men where he might do it lawfully to gain some of them. So certainly don't ever take what I'm saying as a call to give up your morality in Christ or to give up being lawful in Christ.

But you look at what is dividing you and say, Is there anything here that we can overcome the divide? And can I be the one to make the sacrifice? Paul was willing to make the sacrifice. Why? Verse 23.

This is the answer. I do it all for the sake of the gospel. Paul believed that the gospel was worth his life. He believed the gospel was worth living for and it was worth dying for. And he said in Romans, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

For in it, the righteousness of God has been revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, The just shall live by faith. That was Paul's living mantra. I am not ashamed of the gospel and everything in my life will be guided by the directed point of sharing the gospel.

And the gospel will be primary. He's driven to preach. But then in the end of verse 23, he says this. He said, I do it all for the sake of the gospel that I may share with them in its blessings. Who's the them?

The them is the people he's preaching to. He wants to proclaim the gospel so that he can share in the blessings of the gospel with those who believe the gospel as he does. And that's the verse that leads us into our study for today.

Because in verses 24 to 27, coming on the tail end of this, he begins to talk about the subject of running a race. He talks about athletics. He begins to almost seems like he's going a different direction, but he's not because now he's going to talk about the fact that he desires to share in the blessings of the gospel.

And thus he turns his attention to persevering in the faith. How do we share in the blessings of the gospel? We persevere in our faith. And Paul uses himself as an example of someone who must persevere in his faith.

The Perseverance of the Saints and the Warnings of Apostasy

How many of you have ever heard the phrase once saved, always saved? If you're a Baptist, you have. If you ever come out of a Baptist background, you've heard once saved, always saved. I want you to know something, and this is important.

The doctrine that is typically referred to by that title, once saved, always saved, is a little different than what is taught in the historic reform teaching. Because we teach something called the perseverance of the saints.

Not once saved, always saved. Now they are similar. I'm going to talk about how they're similar. But the difference is this. Because I'm often asked, if somebody comes up to me and somebody says, do you believe in once saved, always saved?

If I've got two seconds to answer, I say yes. Because I'm not going to, I'm not going to, I don't want to misrepresent that I believe that someone can be legitimately saved and then lost. Because I don't.

But when someone says, do you believe in once saved, always saved? I always have to qualify it. I say, I believe in the perseverance of the saints. Here's the difference. Once saved, always saved says that once a person gets saved, no matter what they do, even if they completely reject Jesus Christ, they're still saved.

The perseverance of the saints says that once a person is saved, God will so work in that person's heart in such a way that they will never truly fall away. I .e. they will persevere in the faith. You see the difference.

Once one says Christ is yours, whether he changes your life or not. The other says, if Christ is truly yours, he's going to change your life. And that's the big difference. And and so when people talk about this particular passage and many like it and they talk about the idea of being disqualified and because that's what Paul's going to talk about.

He's going to talk about running a race, not making it to the end. Why would Paul even talk like this? Because there is such a thing as apostasy. There are people who claim Jesus Christ, claim to be followers of his and then fall away.

And what do they prove? Do they prove that God can't keep them? Do they prove that you can lose your salvation? No, they prove by their rejection that they were never saved. To begin with, 1 John tells us they went out from us, but they were not of us, for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us.

But they went out to prove that they were not truly of us. The Bible talks about people who fall away. And in fact, over and over again, Jesus told a parable. He said a sower went out to sow a seed. Some of the seed fell along the pathway and the birds of the air came and ate it.

He said some of the seed fell among rocky soil and it sprung up for a time, but it withered and died because it had no root. He said some fell among the weeds. And as it tried to grow, it was choked out by the weeds.

He said, but some fell in the good soil. And that which fell in the good soil grew up and produced a harvest. Some 20 fold, some 50 fold, some 100 fold. You remember this parable, right? In fact, it's one of the few parables Jesus explains because the apostles later said, what does that mean?

And Jesus said, I'll tell you what it means. The birds of the air, that's Satan. When somebody hears the word, Satan comes and he immediately tries to steal the word from him. That's the hard ground. That's the seed that's immediately picked up off the hard ground.

He said, but that seed that fell in the rocky soil and sprung up. These are the people that claim faith. And then when the trials of the world come, they immediately fall away because they have no root.

They're not genuine. Same with those who are among the weeds. The cares and the worries of this world crush them. How do we know who the genuine are? Then they go on to bear a harvest. Not all the same.

Not everybody's going to be R .C. Sproul or John MacArthur. Not everybody's going to have the same harvest, but we all will bear fruit in keeping with repentance. So perseverance of the saints and once saved, always saved are distinct.

While they both have the same end, that a person who's truly saved will not ever fall away. Thus, I can say, yes, I believe in once saved, always saved. And in the basic definition of crass literalism, yes.

But I want to tell you what leads to in the once saved, always saved. If you take that approach and that's your dogma, what happens is you end up with a belief system that doesn't give way to the warnings of scripture.

John Piper, pastor of Bethlehem, used to be pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church. Most of you are familiar with John Piper. He writes in one of his books, I just want to read to you what he wrote. I confronted a man about adultery he was living in and pled with him to return to his wife.

Then I said, you know, Jesus says that if you don't fight this sin with the kind of seriousness that you're willing to gouge out your own eye, you will go to hell. As a professing Christian, he looked at me in utter disbelief as though he'd never heard anything like this in his life.

And he said, you mean you think a person can lose his salvation? You see the problem, the man, it doesn't matter if I'm living in adultery. It doesn't matter if I'm living in sin. It doesn't matter if I'm wantonly rebelling against the gospel because I believe once you're saved, you can never be lost.

And so I don't have to consider the warnings of scripture, which says that if your right eye causes you to sin, that you ought to remove it because it's better to enter into eternity with one eye missing than it is to go into hell.

Do you not think those warnings are legitimate? Do you not think they matter? Ultimately, the warnings of scripture are legitimate. And the greatest warning of all is this. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven.

What is the last thing Jesus says in that section? He says, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. But the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven on that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?

And I will declare to them, I never knew you. Notice he doesn't say, I knew you for a while and you couldn't take it. Or I knew you for a while and you fell away. I knew you and you apostatized. No, I never knew you.

Justin Peters, great preacher of the gospel, said something recently. I'd never thought about this. And maybe shame on me for never having had this thought. But he said, he said, you know, goats never become sheep.

They're always sheep. Sheep don't become goats. They're lost sheep. And when they get found, that's when we, you know, but they don't. But it's weird. God's sheep or we're not. Jesus said, I never knew you.

You weren't a sheep for a while and then you became a goat. And then you became a sheep. I know a guy, I know people who believe salvation is like a yo-yo. I'm down one day, I'm up the next. I'm down one day, I'm up the next.

I'm saved when I'm doing good. I'm lost when I'm not doing so good. Boy, what a life to live. So all that was the introduction to the passage. Because Paul's going to say in this passage, he says, I'm running this race like an athlete.

I'm running this race. I even beat my body. Now, I have to be careful taking that uber literally, because there are some people who literally beat themselves with whips and cut themselves with knives.

And I don't think that's what Paul says in this text. In fact, in the NAS, it says Buffett. And that has been misinterpreted to mean beat, physically. Paul says, I keep my body under discipline. I actually discipline myself for the sake of the gospel.

I discipline myself for truth. Let's read it again together. We'll start at verse 24. He says, Do you not know that in a race all runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run as you may obtain it.

Paul compares the Christian life to a race. And I believe he compares heaven in this context to a prize. Some people say heaven's not the prize. It's a crown that's the prize. OK. And here's the reason for the argument.

They argue that you can't make heaven the prize because that means we earn it. Christ earned it. We know that. And yet Paul is using a metaphor here. You have to be careful with metaphors, because metaphors, if they're stretched too far, can be disjointed.

And you create things that are not intending to be said here. But I think the meaning is there. I think Paul's talking about the same thing Jesus talked about in Luke 14. Jesus said this. He says, Which of you, when you desire to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost?

You realize that Christianity is not meant to be a one time thing. I always hate it when I hear somebody say, I got saved when I was 14. How did Jesus change your life? I got saved when I was 14. What has changed in your life?

I got saved when I was 14. Well, what happened? Well, the pastor preached a sermon. I felt a wiggle in my tummy. And so I got up and I walked forward. And I grabbed the withered hand of that old preacher.

And he prayed for me. And I got saved when I was 14. Has Christ changed your life? No. I have no desire for the things of God. No desire to follow after God. No desire for perseverance in the faith. But I got saved when I was 14.

Brian Borgman, pastor I love a lot. He said, It's like guys who say, I'm a track star. And when they come to the track, they go sit with the cheerleaders. All right. He said, That might be the desire of some guys.

Just go sit with the cheerleaders. But that's not if you're a track star. You're not over there sitting on the sidelines. You're running in the race. And some people don't have their shoes tied yet. Paul uses this analogy of commitment.

Because, by the way, the Isthmian Games, this was the historical context that Paul's in. Because there were several games in the ancient world. There was the Olympic Games, which we still celebrate and do today.

But they had other games that happened. And they did it periodically on the off years and things. And one of them was called the Isthmian Games. And that was done in the Corinthian Isthmus, which was just the place that it was held.

It was held there in Corinth. So the people who lived in Corinth understood probably better than anybody the commitment that an athlete made. Athletes at that particular time had to prove themselves worthy to be able to compete.

And you know what they competed for? A wreath. They didn't compete for a gold medal. And the wreath was not even... It was made of celery. Now, different places did different ones. They had some made of olive leaves, some made of pine.

But the ones in Corinth were made of celery. It wasn't even anything valuable. What mattered was winning the race. Finishing. Getting to the end. It didn't matter. You weren't running for the prize. You were running for the fact that you were going to complete it.

You were going to be honored and be at the end. You weren't going to give up halfway through. Now, please don't take anything I'm saying in any way, shape, or form to try to... The idea that I'm saying that as a Christian that you're earning your salvation by your perseverance.

Because here's the reality. If you persevere in your faith, when you die and you face your Savior, you are going to say, thank you for my perseverance. Because the Bible says to work out your salvation with fear and trembling because it is God who works in you.

Both to will and to do his good pleasure. Everything you do. Even your perseverance. That's why it's one of the doctrines of grace, right? That's why it's part of that tulip that we believe. You know, total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace.

Perseverance of the saints. Because it's all an act of God. God is the one who causes me to persevere. He's the one who gives me the self-control. Verse 25. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things.

They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. They're working on this crown that's made of celery. We're actually working toward a crown that is imperishable. Our place, our place with God.

And Paul's point is simple. A Christian should be more disciplined in their faith than an athlete is disciplined in his work toward getting that wreath that means nothing. And yet, honestly, ask yourselves, do we expel any effort at all in our Christian walk?

It's sad I even have to ask that. I should be asking the question, do we expel effort that's valuable and sacrificial? But I say, do we expel any? Say, well, I got up at eight and came to church this morning.

Pastor, that's something. Have you seen my children? My wife did a lot of work to get here this morning. And somebody's going to object. I know it's going to happen. We don't need effort. Pastor, we have grace.

I'm telling you, if anybody believes in justification by grace through faith alone, it is the apostle Paul. And if there's a pastor who preaches it, it's I believe it. I preach it. We are justified by grace through faith alone.

But Paul's writing this. He believes in justification by grace through faith alone. And yet he can say, run. Run the race. And what does he say at the end of his own life? I ran the race. I fought the good fight.

I kept the faith. Not glorifying himself, but reminding himself of the grace of God that was in his life that gave him the ability to run that race, that gave him the ability to fight that fight, that gave him the ability to complete that race.

You know what Peter says in his second epistle, 2 Peter 1, verses 5 to 8, he says this. He says, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control, self-control with steadfastness, steadfastness with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love.

For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. You notice he says, make every effort. I think in the church, we've become scared to tell people to make an effort.

We've become so scared to challenge people because we don't want to run people away. We're so afraid to put the onus on you that yes, God expects you to make an effort in your faith. Here's the thing, you joined Pop Warner Football.

My son played Pop Warner Football. I wrote an article about this years ago. My son did Pop Warner Football. You know what they expected? Three hour practices, multiple days per week and all day on Saturday.

And you know what the coaches got paid? Nothing. You know what the assistant coaches got? Less than nothing because they had to deal with the coaches. And yet they did it willingly. In fact, they were so committed that they would come early and stay late.

They were so committed that they would be having their children diet so they'd make weight on Saturday. These are 11 year old kids. The amount of effort we put into things that don't matter. And then the pastor asks you for effort in your faith and you say, I'm living under grace.

What a shame. Really, what a shame, right? So we get to verse 26 and Paul says, I don't run aimlessly. I don't box as one beating the air. I discipline my body. I keep it under control. Lest after preaching to others, I myself should become disqualified.

Self-Examination, Strong Warnings, and Sure Grace

Now that's the controversial passage and I don't have another hour to, but I could spend another hour on this subject because Paul is saying something here that has been so confusing to people because you've got people on both sides, right?

You got the groups out there that believe you can lose your salvation every other day. You know, you've got your groups that just, they don't believe in any kind of perseverance of the saints. They don't believe in once saved, always saved.

They don't believe in any of that. And they just say, well, Paul's here saying he didn't want to lose his salvation. So he's worried about it because he can live his whole life as a saved man. Five minutes before he gets to his deathbed, he could lose his salvation.

It's all for nothing. And then you get the other side, that the once saved, always saved crowd, that either they don't deal with this passage at all. And I've seen that. Or they say, well, Paul's not talking about salvation at all here.

He's talking about reward in heaven. He doesn't want to lose his reward in heaven, which is his place, his crown. Or some others say, well, he doesn't want to lose his apostleship. He doesn't want to lose his position as an apostle.

Well, I think that your presupposition, one way or the other, tends to influence your interpretation. If you're predisposed to believing somebody can lose your salvation, you'll say, here, Paul's talking about losing salvation.

If you're predisposed not to, maybe you grew up Baptist or something like that, you say, well, it can't be that. So it has to be the other. I think the answer is found in the word disqualified. In the King James Version, it's cast away.

In most of your modern translations, it's disqualified. The word is adakamos. Adakamos means to be proved not genuine or to fail the test of genuineness. It means to be rejected as worthless. And a translation of adakamos could be a reprobate.

So I believe the answer is found in between the positions. I don't believe Paul could lose his salvation, but I do believe that a warning is being laid here about salvation because I believe adakamos is in relation to a person's status as saved or unsaved.

And I believe Paul is the example of one to give a warning to the church. And the warning is this, if you do not persevere in your faith, you have no reason to believe that you're going to attain the promise of heaven.

If you do not remain in the faith, you have no reason to have any hope. So I don't, oh, that makes me so uncomfortable. Let me ask you a question. Do you not know folks who began the life of faith, who claimed the name of Jesus Christ, who were immersed in water, who ate communion, who sat next to you and sang songs of praise, who today would tell you they do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, have no desire for the word, have no desire to serve him, and have gone after their own lusts and have left the faith.

And you're not going to tell me you don't worry for their souls? Have we not even seen preachers who have preached the gospel? And yet now we look at them and worry for their souls because they have demonstrated themselves having preached to others that they themselves were not saved.

Isn't it scary to think that a preacher could be unsaved? Beloved, there's a lot of them. And so Paul says that we examine ourselves. We examine ourselves in light of the truth. Examine ourselves in light of real warnings of apostasy.

You see, in the Bible, we have two things that we have to balance. It's the title of the message, strong warnings and sure grace. And the Bible teaches both. It teaches the promise of eternal security and the reality of genuine apostasy.

And we have to learn the difference because those who are truly in Christ are absolutely secure. Nothing can take them away. He is in the hand of Christ and Christ is in the hand of the Father and no man can snatch them out of his hand.

Jesus Christ says this. And yet again, in second Peter, it says this, do all you can to make your calling and election sure. Examine yourself. The Bible is filled with promises and warnings. Promises to those who are in Christ and warnings to those who are not.

Again, Brian Borgman said this. He said, the warnings keep you from presumption and the promises keep you from despair. The warnings keep you from presumption and the promises keep you from despair. So I would argue this verses 24 to 27 is about spiritual self-evaluation.

Paul talks about running a race. He talks about boxing. He talks about all these athletics and he says it in this regard. We need to watch the state of our soul. Alistair Begg said this. We cannot dispense with the necessity of spiritual watchfulness.

You know what? I have people sometimes, and this does worry me when people are always concerned about whether or not they're saved and they come to me all the time because eventually you want them to find peace I don't want people just living in this state of unknowing.

And I think about this a lot because I do believe that the devil's goal is to make the unsaved feel like they are and the saved feel like they're not. Because in both, you're getting both to be ineffective.

If the unsaved think they're saved, they don't need to do anything. And if the saved think they're unsaved, then they're not gonna do anything. So there's this whole push for ineffectiveness. And some folks do come and they're always worried about their salvation.

I try to help them find some peace in that. But I wanna tell you this, if you've never wondered, if you've never had to evaluate yourself, if you've never had to look at your heart and ask, am I really in the faith?

I wonder about you too. I'm more concerned if you don't care. Paul tells us every time, and we're gonna have communion here in a minute. Paul says, every time we come around this table, what do we do?

Examine yourselves. We examine ourselves. And then what do we do when we're done examining ourselves? We look to Christ. Because we know we're never gonna measure up. We know we're never gonna pass the ultimate test of righteousness.