What does persevering in Christ look like? | Clip from Perseverance of the Saints

When can we be said to be walking in Christ? And I think we both feel that this is really where his sermon excels. I'm going to read the little headings that he gives, the subheadings, and then Chuck, we can talk about it.

So, when persons may be said to walk so as to comply with the design of the apostle in our text. And he describes, well, what does it look like when you are persevering? And he gives these different points.

Number one, this they may be said to do when they walk in the way of God's commandments with diligence and activity, making religion their chief business and employment. Number two, this they may be said to do, to persevere, when they go on in the duties of piety or holiness with freedom and cheerfulness.

Number three, persons may be said to comply with the exhortation when they act in religion deliberately, that is, when their religious progress is the effect of due consideration and choice. Number four, such as walk in Christ are constant in their religious performances, the general tenor of their lives being spent this way.

And finally, number five, we know that we're persevering in Christ, he says, when we walk in Christ and our walk is progressive, we go forward in our journey zionward. So, with all those things, Chuck, what do you feel are some of the, you know, more important things that he points out there?

The second one that he mentions about happily doing what you're doing in the Christian walk. So, not just a list of duties that you're checking off, I think about when I was a kid in discipleship training, or training union, I think they called it then, they would come around and ask, who read your Bible every day this week?

And I don't remember if there were other questions, but I do remember that one, you know. And certainly there were people, surely there were people who read their Bible happily, but I'm sure as a kid, there were times when I raised my hand and I was very happy to raise.

My hand.

And I hadn't read it to know the Lord, but I read it because I wanted to be able to raise my hand and say, I read my Bible every day, you know. So it was a duty, but there was no love to Christ in it.

So what he describes as walking in him is not just a duty to check off and say, okay, I've done that. You can imagine doing that, you know, in a relationship with your wife. Check off the list of duties as a husband.

Well, there's not much love in that, and you're not going to really honor her by doing that. But for love of her, there are things that you do. For love of Christ, we walk in him.

Yeah.

So we cannot really call ourselves persevering in faith, persevering in our walk in the Lord, if there is no love to Christ in our duties. Just doing the duties is not enough to be thought of as a Christian who's walking or running the race.

I like the first point that he makes when he says there has to be done with diligence, you know, and really he presses that through all of these sub points. There ought to be an intentionality and an earnestness.

And let me read you a quote. When he talks about how really walking with the Lord and really moving forward in that, you know, really pursuing the Christian life with earnestness, how that ought to make every other pursuit in life pale by comparison.

Here's what he writes.

All earthly things ought to be sought after with indifference when compared with the pains used in seeking Christ. So the apostle advises us to buy as though they possess not. 1 Corinthians 7 .30. But alas, he writes, this is ordinarily practiced the backward way.

They pray as if they prayed not. They hear as if they heard not. A spirit of indifference runs through all the veins of their religious performances. Yes, while they are burning hot in pursuit of the world, they are as cold as stone in the service of God.

So merely going to church, as you mentioned, merely going through the duties with no love, that's not perseverance. Merely going through these things with a lackadaisical kind of indifference level of energy, that's not what the Bible calls perseverance.

In his first major point that we've already covered, but he mentioned in that about how we come to Christ desperate, you know, there's no other cure, there's no other place to go, there's no other hope, and so we come as beggars to Him.

And maybe one of the reasons that we fail in continuing happily is because we lose something of that desperation, or we think that the cure that Christ has provided is one that leaves us no longer dependent upon Him.

When the truth is, He has changed us and made us a new person, but we continue to be dependent upon Him. And we never really graduate from that. The difference might be illustrated in thinking about going to the doctor with some sickness.

Maybe you have strep throat, and they give you a shot, and it takes care of the strep throat, and you don't have that anymore. And you don't have to keep going back to the doctor and keep getting a prescription filled.

The strep throat is gone. But you could then think about a different situation where, like we have in our family, I have a family member with a heart transplant. And with the heart transplant, there's been a radical change in this person's health.

And so radical that there are new antibodies that exist within this body that weren't there previously. And yet, still dependent upon medicine so that your body doesn't reject that heart. So not a perfect illustration, but the dependency.

There's not been a graduation from dependency upon medicine. There's an ongoing need, even though so much better than she was before. And really kind of a new lease on life, but still there's an ongoing dependence.

We don't graduate. We're not cured in a way that leaves us free of Christ. We're cured so that we are happily dependent upon Christ the rest of our lives and to eternity.

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